peterp

I traded her in for a 5' 11" supermodel . OK, not really. Sadly, no solution yet. I drove a friend's Toyota SUV the other day and they have a strap that hangs down. Something as simple as that would work on the Q5 but I haven't found a good place to mount a strap. She is able to reach it, but it's a stretch and an annoyance. I would definitely have your wife try it and see how comfortable she is closing it if you haven't done that already.

Reisen

I'll only add that when we were shopping for SUV's, I had zero interest in a power liftgate. In fact, I purposefully did not want to pay for it, and would not have gotten it had it not been standard on the 2011 2.0 PP we wound up buying.

Fast forward nine months, and I think it's the best thing since sliced bread. I absolutely love it, I love where Audi mounted the close button (versus inside the trunk like on my MiL's 2011 Grand Cherokee), and I wouldn't dream of buying another SUV without it. My only complaint would be having to hold down the button on the key, versus hitting it twice (or even once) on competitor's models. That's annoying.

HaveBullDogWillTravel

There is no easy solution unless you attach some sort of strap. Just get the P/Plus with a power lift gate...they're SOOOOOO convenient.

manup

"Just get the P/Plus with a power lift gate...they're SOOOOOO convenient".

q5dave

ya, but that doesn't solve there problem, that option doesn't close it.
Don't get why they wouldn't have it close as well, other mfg's do it

UrbanExtant

It does solve it to an extent. One can set the height the tailgate opens to so that a shorter person can reach it when it's open.

q5dave

your right, forgot about that.

JohnBoyToo

To the op,

have you considered shorter liftgate supports ?

somewhere like here: http://autopartsbylou.com/lift-suppo...em=48154&qty=2 might have them...

I swapped the supports on my other suv for about $20 each and went longer to get me about 2 more inches of clearance so I would stop hitting my head
would imagine with the correct supports you could lower it enough...

good luck...

opus360

That's a great idea.

Looks like no availability for the Q5. If one makes such a modification, I assume it will void the warranty as far as that part. How about other parts or areas of the car?

JohnBoyToo

You would have to search around the net for the proper part....
on a powered tailgate it might be a problem to find the match...

but on just a liftgate, just the proper length, strength, and connection type is all you need... (you don't want the matching set - you probably want 2 - 3 Inches shorter - the strongarm brand has been good to me...
http://www.google.com/search?q=hatch...w=1366&bih=650

give a few of the mfg a call and tell them what you want to do...
that's what I did and it was a 10 minute swap (but did need another set of hands to hold it up while I swapped as one lift will not support the hatch...)