I recently stayed at the Peninsula Hotel in Paris. One of the city’s finest places to book a room, it is famous for a long list of famous guests. George Gershwin composed An American In Paris there – the Vietnam peace accord was signed on the bar.

It also has some of the best loos in the world. I mean, these toilets are seriously high tech. Heated seats, multi-directional ‘wooshing’ jets and piped music to save your blushes.

The RS 7 is a pretty fine place to sit too. Multi-adjustable, heated and with a plethora of lumber supports, the quilted leather is very cool indeed.

They are certainly in Bentley territory – although I can’t find a messaging function. AAnd no heated steering wheel? There are so many functions on the wheel it’s sometimes difficult to find everything in a week (and I refuse to use the manual)…

Inside the RS7 is a gorgeous place to sit. It’s refined from the quilted leather seats to the plush headlining – even the infotainment screen glides away neatly into the dashboard.

All good then? Perhaps not. The stretched coupe styling of the RS7 may be streamlined and muscular but to me it looks pretty dated these days.

The very nature of a four-door coupe means it has to be long and low but compared to BMW’s beautiful 6, the Audi is woefully average in profile.

I parked it next to a A7 TDI today and there was very little to set the £100k RS apart from its lesser sibling.

And if I was paying that much for a car it would have be a little bit more special…

Some cars scream performance but in the world of luxury coupes a subtle approach is often preferred.

Forgetting the outrageous Nissan GT-R, machines like the Porsche Panamera, Mercedes CLS and BMW 6 Series are all about keeping the performance under wraps.

And so it is with the RS7. What we have here is a proper supercar dressed in sheep’s clothing. Sure, it looks brutal head on but otherwise there’s very little to suggest the Audi is anything other than an executive jellymould.

Until you put your foot down that is. Then the exhaust ports open, the 4.0-litre engine roads and the RS7 takes off like a stabbed rat.

It is quite ridiculously fast for such a big motor and could power on to 190mph.

Issues? Just the handling, which is strange considering this is a quattro! There’s very little feel through the steering wheel, so set the Drive Select setting to Dynamic for best results.

You wonder sometimes when manufacturers will reach an optimum level of performance for their cars. I’m not actually sure your average driver can tell whether one vehicle is 0.2 seconds faster to 60mph than another.

However, that is the point of the Performance – the ultimate incarnation of the ubiquitous A7. The RS version is quick but this one trims 0.2 seconds off the 60mph dash – oh and it will cost you £6,500 more too.

You’re only really going to spot the difference on a race track – and then I would argue that the 7 isn’t exactly the correct machine to be ripping around Silverstone in the first place.

Looking at the RS7 in front of me now, I’m already wondering who actually buys a car like this. Let’s take it out on the road to find out…