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With the market launch of the new Q7 and SQ7, Audi of America is leaning into its own traditions by highlighting its particular branch of the Audi Sport family tree. Its new Performance Runs in the Family campaign brings Michèle Mouton and her family to Pikes Peak, connecting Audi’s current flagship SUVs with Mouton’s record-setting victory on the mountain in 1985.
The project includes both a television spot for the Q7 family and a longer retrospective film about Mouton’s return more than 40 years after her final—and most dominant—competitive appearance there. Audi blends archival material with new footage of Mouton, her family and the SQ7, but the historical connection goes much deeper than old racing footage spliced between shots of a new model arriving at dealerships.
MOUTON RETURNS TO THE SPORT QUATTRO
For the longer film, Audi Tradition lent the project the same Sport quattro S1 that Mouton drove to victory in the 1985 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Better still, she is not simply posing beside it and reciting a few quotes. Instead, she gets back behind the wheel and drives it up the mountain, apparently for the first time since her 1985 victory. This time, she is surrounded by early snow and late-season Colorado scenery that makes Pikes Peak look like one of the wintry rally stages on which Mouton and Audi first built their shared legend.
Mouton made her Pikes Peak debut one year earlier, in 1984, winning her class and placing second overall. She returned in 1985 without longtime co-driver Fabrizia Pons, having committed the largely unpaved 12.42-mile course to memory. Her 11:25.39 run established a course record, beating the previous mark by nearly 13 seconds and making her the first—and still the only—woman to claim overall victory on the mountain.
The result was especially hard-earned because of the resistance Mouton encountered during the event. After officials penalized her for exceeding the paddock speed limit during practice and allegedly spraying gravel while warming the tires during a practice start, she was prohibited from driving the Audi through the paddock and to the starting line in the customary manner. As a result, her Audi teammates had to push the car to the line, where it remained in neutral until the clock began.
That iconic scene appears briefly in Audi’s new film—an Easter egg that harks one of the defining moments of fortitude and perseverance in the shared history of both Mouton and Audi. Michèle later said the restrictions only increased her determination, particularly amid a reception she regarded as openly hostile toward a French woman arriving with a German rally car to challenge established American competitors. She responded by breaking the record and winning by more than 30 seconds.
A BRANCH REACHING FROM PAST TO PRESENT
Back in 1985, the speeding penalty and old boys’ club atmosphere were only minor examples of the resistance Audi faced. Less than a year after Mouton’s Pikes Peak victory, FISA announced that Group B would be prohibited beginning with the 1987 season. Audi announced its planned withdrawal from the World Rally Championship just days later.
In the United States, however, Audi of America continued to support the Sport quattro, helping encourage Audi Sport to further develop the car for Pikes Peak. Bobby Unser drove an S1 E2 version to victory in 1986, followed by Walter Röhrl in an even more radically evolved variant.
You have to wonder whether that theme was not lost on those brainstorming this particular campaign, because the Q7 and SQ7 now take their own places in the same tradition of carrying performance forward amid changing conditions.
Strict European emissions rules have complicated the business case for large gasoline-powered performance SUVs. North America, however, will receive the new Q7 with a 2.9-liter twin-turbocharged V6 from the same engine family that powered the B9-generation RS 5. In this application, it produces 429 hp and 442 lb-ft of torque, with Audi claiming a 4.8-second sprint from zero to 60 mph.
The SQ7, announced thus far for North America, continues with a 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8 producing 591 hp and 590 lb-ft. That is considerably more than the outgoing SQ7 and effectively equivalent to the output of the RS Q8 when that model launched in the United States for 2021. In the new SQ7, the result is a claimed zero-to-60-mph time of 3.7 seconds.
Those figures allow Audi of America to claim best-in-class horsepower, torque and acceleration for both models, based on the manufacturer data available at the time of publication.
Both the Q7 and SQ7 are now arriving at Audi dealerships across the United States. The campaign launches November 9 across television, digital and social channels, with additional behind-the-scenes material planned for Audi USA’s social accounts.
PERFORMANCE RUNS IN THE FAMILY
The timed launch this week is worth noting. Just one week before the Audi Revolut F1 Team arrives in Las Vegas for one of the final races of its inaugural season, Audi of America is reminding the world of its own important place within that shared motorsport history – in fact, its own unique branch on the performance family tree. The new Q7 and SQ7 are its latest contributions to the line.
Taken together, the Q7 campaign, the Mouton family reunion in Colorado and Audi’s Formula 1 presence in Nevada make a coordinated case for the brand’s continuing performance tradition. They also highlight the particular importance of the American market—and the American “Wild West”—as a place where the right conditions still exist to keep that tradition moving forward.
In 1985, Audi brought technology developed in international rallying to an American mountain where local convention—and some of the people enforcing it—did not make the attempt easy. Four decades later, Audi of America is returning to that story as it introduces another generation of performance vehicles. Bringing Mouton, her family and the original Sport quattro together with the SQ7 on the mountain gives the campaign more substance than a token heritage reference. It also reinforces its central point: for Audi, keeping performance alive despite the headwinds is an enduring tradition.
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