Audi SQ2 review: I’d buy it for the cabin lights alone

I try so hard not to be easily impressed by shiny baubles. But one look at the sexy blue cabin lighting in this SQ2 and I was sold.

Shame about the colour: the Audi SQ2

While it’s important, in an emotional sense, to maintain a child-like sense of wonder that allows you to find profound pleasure in the simple things, in a professional sense it’s also vital not to be too easily impressed, or distracted, by shiny baubles. And yet still I find myself being childishly won over by dazzling distractions that would not turn the head of an actual, proper man.

I recently made a life-changing investment in a new home, chosen because the tap head out the front had been replaced with a nicely carved brass duck. Sure, there are other things I like about the house, but it was over for me in those first few seconds when I became fondlingly fascinated with the duck tap. This happens in cars all the time – the coffee-table-sized central screen in a Tesla got me good, as did the Wurlitzer-like, light-up round screen in the new Mini – and most recently in the case of the Audi SQ2.

Inside the cabin

I swear, I actually heard myself gush: “Oooh, look at the lights!” like a four-year-old at Christmas, after jumping in and encountering the “glare-free LED light strip” seemingly sewn into the “knee pads” on either side of the central pillar, and into the dash in front of the passenger. These tiny pins of light give off a glow of truly Tron-like blue (and you can even adjust the intensity of the colour, or turn them off, if you’re insane) which is, at least to some simpletons, hugely impressive.

I couldn’t stop touching it, and showing it to passengers, including my daughter, who gave me that very special look of hers that says: “How can I be so smart when my father is a gibbering idiot?” and then applied full sass to the sentence: “Uh, yeah, but don’t you think it would be better if it matched the paint on the outside?” My lack of fashion sense or care for colour matching will only bother her more as she gets older, but I had to admit she had a point, although it’s hard to imagine why anyone would choose the “Apple Green” my SQ2 was painted in. Nor have I ever seen an apple in its hue. Slapped on the sharp, boxy and slightly savage shape of this sporty yet tiny SUV, it looks more like Anaemic Avocado, but that wouldn’t make a very appealing colour name.

From the back

I have come to realise that Audi, despite not being Italian, is very much aware of the selling power of style. It is often recognised as the brand with the best interiors, and I think that’s because it always stays one step ahead with the surprise-and-delight features, like the brilliant blue lights in this SQ2, or its world-leading Virtual Cockpit, which lets you change the size and layout of your dashboard’s dials and maps.

I was so impressed by the look and feel of the cabin that I was even distracted from the fact that I don’t personally get cars like this at all. SUVs were once big lumbering things that roamed the Earth, but now you can choose to have one that’s strangely small and almost unnecessarily quick. Effectively, the SQ2 is a bulked-up S3 hatch – a car I very much enjoy – on stilts, or at least stilettos. People buy them, I think, because they like the look of them – the laws of low centre of gravity tell us such a machine can’t be quite as much fun to drive as a smaller hatch with the same underpinnings.

Design detail

The engine is a 2.0-litre four cylinder making 221kW and 400Nm, which is actually 8kW and 20Nm more than you got in the old S3 (although the next S3, arriving early in 2022, will have even more grunt) and it can hit 100km/h in 4.9 seconds. The funny thing is that, most of the time, you’d assume the S in its name was for Sexy blue lighting rather than “Sport”, because it hides its shouty abilities under standard drive settings that are more sedentary than predatory.

Turn everything up to 11 and change the gears yourself, however, and it suddenly gets very strident indeed, screaming all the way to a 6500pm redline. Why you’d want your small Audi SUV to behave like a shark dropped into a salmon farm remains beyond me.

The SQ2 is lower (by 20mm) than a standard Q2, so it handles a bit better, but its stiffened suspension can also make it more of a chore on broken road surfaces. It would not be your choice for crossing corrugations, but with its clever all-wheel drive it would be a bit of fun on a smooth and winding dirt road.

If you are looking for a small and sporty SUV, please write and explain to me what it is you’re thinking, and then be seriously tempted by the Audi SQ2’s $64,400 price tag, which is a bit of a bargain in this strange segment. The next sporty SUV Audi up, the RS Q3, starts at $92,900.

You’ll also want to do most of your driving at night, because that’s when the lights really play on your left knee beautifully. Sigh.

Audi SQ2

ENGINE: 2.0-litre turbocharged (221kW/400Nm). Average fuel 7.7 litres per 100km TRANSMISSION: 7-speed dual-clutch automatic, all-wheel drive

PRICE: $64,400

STARS: ★★★½