Fantastic engine. I love driving it. I have the Sport model and its really fun to drive (particularly compared with the Tahoe I had before).

Seating and cargo space. Its great for our family of five. Although when the third row seats are being used, there is very little cargo space in the very back. We have a cargo box for the top of the vehicle, but my wife doesn't like the hassle of getting things in and out of the cargo box when the alternative is to drive our Suburban (which she prefers). But of the two, I much prefer to drive the Audi (see "Fantastic engine" above).

Road-trip friendly? Depends on what you mean by that. Anything is going to be more road trip friendly than a truck. I thought the Q7 would be road trip friendly because it has internal WiFi, which I had never had before (many cars probably have this now) so my kids could use their Kindle tablets to play games and watch videos, etc. But with the 2015 model, some of their vehicles had an on-board WiFi hardware/service through T-Mobile, and some through AT&T. Mine turned out to be T-Mobile, and was never very reliable. We used it on a few road trips between LA and Phoenix and the service was very inconsistent. We canceled it after the second road trip. If you are interested in that feature, I think they may have fixed it in the 2017 or 2018 models, but I would definitely ask. Cargo space for road trips was fine with the cargo box (see above), but my wife and kids prefer the Suburban, which is like driving a big boat compared to the Audi.

Reliability. Mine has been pretty good. I did buy it certified pre-owned and am just now finishing the warranty. It did have an episode about a year ago when the engine power started cutting out and the electrical system got wonky. I let it sit and then drove to the dealership and they could never get it to do the same thing again. They swapped a few spark plug wires and I drove it for another 10 months before it started doing it again. Then they ended up replacing a couple of oil seals and some of the valves — all under warranty. Other than that, its been solid for the last nearly 6 years. I do all the regularly scheduled maintenance (other than paying them to lubricate the sunroof — they wanted some astronomical amount for that 😉 ).

Not sure when they went to the slightly smaller body style. I like the newer body style but prefer the longer wheelbase of mine.

Any other questions, just ask.