Audi A3 Sportback
The Audi A3 firmly established the premium compact class in 1996. Now, more than a quarter of a century further on, the fourth generation of this highly successful model is ready to make its mark. These days of course, this Audi faces strong competition, but back in 1996 when we first saw the A3 model line, the idea of being able to move a car up-market in class and appeal without increasing its size was new and rather different. Cynics dismissed it as a way of dressing up ordinary family hatches and charging a lot more for them. Customers though, loved the idea and by the time the second generation A3 arrived in 2003, BMW and Mercedes rivals had also arrived to swell the market. Initially, those two brands struggled to produce products good enough to overtake Audi and the result was that nearly a quarter of a million MK2 A3s were pounding global roads by the time the third generation model arrived in the Autumn of 2012. It sold for nearly eight years until this more cutting-edge MK4 model arrived.
DRIVING EXPERIENCE
To start with, there's nothing particularly shocking on the engine front. The keynote mainstream engine is a 1.5-litre TFSI petrol unit with 150PS, which is offered in conventional form with a manual gearbox but gets Audi's 48-volt mild hybrid tech if you order it with the 7-speed S tronic auto transmission. The other mainstream engine option is another 150PS unit, a 2.0 TDI diesel that has to be had with the S tronic auto. You can also talk to your dealer about a couple of lesser powerplants, a 1.0 TFSI three cylinder petrol engine with 110PS (in the 30 TFSI) and a de-tuned 2.0 TDI diesel with 116PS (in the 30 TDI variant). More powerful future variants will get quattro drive and there'll also be a petrol plug-in hybrid offered in two power levels. As usual, upper models will offer optional adaptive damping, adjustable through the comfort, auto, dynamic, efficiency and individual modes of the standard Audi drive select driving modes system.
