Audi A4 Range Car Review

Facts At A Glance
Car: Audi A4 range
Prices: £21,310-£34,165 – on the road INSURANCE GROUPS: 11-16
Emissions: 120-219g/km
Performance: [2.0 TDI 143PS] 0-60mph 9.4s / Max Speed 134 mph
Fuel Consumption: [2.0 TDI 143PS] (urban) 37.7mpg / (extra urban) 65.7mpg / (combined) 51.4mpg
Safety: Twin front, window & side airbags, ESP, ABS, traction control,
Dimensions: Length/Width/Height, 4703/1826/1427mm

STILL THE ONE

Our Rating: 7.4 / 10

Audi’s third generation A4 may be evolutionary rather than revolutionary but that doesn’t stop it being a desirable choice. Jonathan Crouch explains why…

Audi could have been a little more daring with the third generation A4, but that won’t stop it challenging for outright leadership of the compact executive class. It’s a little larger and slightly sportier than before, plus a strong engine range is retained and improved. Sure, you’ll pay a premium to own one – but you’ll feel good about doing it.

The importance of the A4 can’t be stated too heavily for Audi. This, after all, was the car that made its mark back at its original launch in 1995 and the Ingolstadt brand hasn’t looked back since, now regularly out-selling its BMW and Mercedes rivals here. It’s a success story that won’t continue if the company gets its foundational model wrong. If you didn’t already know that, then you could probably guess the fact by looking at the latest third generation model, a car that is firmly evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Mind you, evolution seems to work for Audi. People will buy this A4, just as they bought its predecessor, precisely because it doesn’t have the love-it-or-hate-it Marmite-style looks of a BMW 3 Series. Mercedes latest C-Class however, might prove to be a tougher nut to crack.

So what’s new from a driver’s point of view? It had better be good since Audi are positioning this car as "the sportiest in the premium sector". For the time being on the British market, the company talks of a range of "new or extensively revised engines", including two directly injected FSI petrol units and three common rail directly injected TDI diesels.

Shiny new oily bits under the bonnet are all very well but rightly, the engineers thought it better to spend the bulk of the budget they had on things customers would be more likely to notice on that first trip round the block. The headlines in this regard are a new sports chassis with a repositioned front axle, all new steering and (on 3.0 TDI and 3.2 FSI variants) a latest generation quattro system with 40:60 torque split. If you’ve money to spend on the options list, you can also benefit from ‘Audi Drive Select’, enabling tailoring of throttle, steering and suspension characteristics to suit driver preferences

The other headline feature of this latest A4 is the fact that it sits on the longest wheelbase in its class. Audi took action to try and solve the appallingly small bootspace problem suffered by the MK1 A4 when it came to launching the second generation car at the turn of the century and here, they’ve turned their attention (at last) to the poor old rear seat passengers. The lengthened wheel base enables a 36mm increase in rear leg room, with the added bonus of a 20-litre boost in boot capacity, making this car easily the most spacious in its sector. This in turn means that buyers now no longer have to choose between the prestigious badge and low residuals of a compact executive car like the A4 or the larger cabin of a cheaper Medium range model like, say, Ford’s Mondeo or Volkswagen’s Passat. Since these kinds of cars are now dynamically as good as most C-Class, 3 Series or A4 models, that’s just as well.

Audi would argue with this of course, pointing out that the wheelbase change was about promoting the A4 as a driver’s car as well as improving its cabin space. It entailed the repositioning of the front axle 154mm further forwards than in the MK2 model. Complemented by a new state-of-the-art suspension and steering configuration, this more stable foundation allows improved handling balance and agility. It doesn’t make this Audi better than a BMW 3 Series through a set of testing twisties (only rear wheel drive would do that), but it does lift it clear of its Mercedes rival in this respect.

Petrol buyers choose either the turbocharged 1.8 TFSI with either 120PS as a manual or 160PS as a Multitronic automatic. The other four cylinder petrol option is a 211PS 2.0TFSI turbocharged unit. Otherwise, it’s the normally aspirated but silky-smooth V6 3.2 FSI with 265PS. Most customers however, will want a diesel, so there’s the familiar choice of 2.0 TDI (120, 136, 143 or 170PS), 2.7 TDI (190PS) and 3.0 TDI (240PS). If you want automatic transmission on your A4 diesel, yo