Audi A1 1.6 TDI Attraction 2012 Review

Price Guide (recommended price before statutory & delivery charges): $29,900
Options fitted to test car (not included in above price): Metallic paint $990; Technik package (xenon headlamps, climate control air, rear parking beepers) $2000
Crash rating: Five-star (Euro NCAP)
Fuel: Diesel
Claimed fuel economy (L/100km): 3.8
CO2 emissions (g/km): 99
Also consider: Fiat 500 Diesel (from $25,990); MINI Cooper D (from $34,800); Volkswagen 66 TDI (from $22,350)
  
In Audi A1 1.6 TDI we have a car as sharply focused as a track-spec Lotus Exige. But Audi’s junior oiler doesn’t share the baby Brit’s aspirations to performance at all costs. No, quite the opposite: the A1 1.6 TDI is all about fuel economy, fuel economy and fuel economy. As well as getting from A to B, of course, but it imposes some limitations on anyone looking to do that in a hurry.

For those raised on petrol – which is to say, pretty much every Australian-taught driver – diesels take some getting used to. To summarise the natural traits of the oiler against the petrol engine, it delivers less power but more torque, at lower revs. It’s a natural-born heavy lifter, able to flatten hills, even under load, with little effort, but little excitement.

Diesel passenger cars have been standard fare in Europe for decades. Traditionally grimy and slow, they were the preserve of taxis and the poor. But more recently, auto makers have put fair effort into making them cleaner and sprightlier, mainly by the use of increasingly efficient turbocharging. The result: a narrowing of the gap in driver experience between diesel and petrol.

There’s a rising tide of diesel models that are as fun as they are frugal – a number of which hail from Audi. The A1 1.6 TDI is not one of them.

With the A1, Audi has shown considerable acumen in not following its nearest competitor, MINI, down the style-at-all-costs path. This baby bears many well documented advantages over the MINI, most notably in a roomier interior, a usable rear seat (even for grown-ups) and half decent cargo space for a car of its size.

The A1 has drawn plenty of praise for concentrating so many Audi virtues into a light-car package. You’ll find in our previous reviews that it’s smart, practical, surprisingly roomy and comfortable with plenty of mojo for enthusiastic drivers. It’s also five-star Euro NCAP safe and built to Audi’s ever-exacting quality standards. All that, with plenty of the visual and tactile allure its target market demands.

In TDI guise, it’s also very, very frugal. At 3.8L/100km combined, its official figures are in there with the MINI D, the Prius and VW’s Golf BlueMotion. In our city-only week we didn’t cut its official urban consumption figure of 4.4, but the only time we exceeded the early fives was with a car full of people, on a trip which yielded 6.2L/100km.

On collection, it came a surprise that a premium littlie like this gets only five speeds in manual guise. Particularly when the MINI gets six – these are things that count for people spending twice the price of a Hyundai i20 or a hi-spec Nissan Micra.

It soon became evident it doesn’t need a sixth gear, not out the top end anyway. In fifth, it makes light work of decent inclines like those in the 80km/h Sydney harbour tunnel down barely having to touch 1500rpm. Useful here is the memory function in the cruise control that returns to the set speed once you’ve changed gear. That’s the kind of thing that separates the A1 from those cars costing half the price.

What it could do with is a reduction in the ratio on first. This is the most stallable oiler this writer has driven. Yes, it’s calibrated for gentle, foot-off acceleration, but taking off up even a gentle incline when it was cold, even under this relatively experienced right foot, it stalled more often than a low-rev oiler should.

When it didn’t conk out, it often felt perilously close to doing so, even when it was warm. Yes, diesels require a bit of re-education in the application of the go pedal, but the A1 is calibrated too far in the direction of frugality at the expense of low-rev response.

In mitigation, much of this would no doubt be solved by the seven-speed S-tronic transmission, a $2350 option. At 3.5:1, its first gear is a little lower than the manual’s 3.778:1, which would without doubt solve those tenuous take-off issues, and there’s no shame in its combined 4.2L/100km combined.

This is just one of many pointers to what you get for the premium price tag: lots of high-tech stuff like auto stop-start, regenerative braking and all sorts of technologies to cut engine friction.

One minor annoyance is the flat-surface wing mirror on the passenger side. I can’t remember the last time I road tested a vehicle that didn’t have convex mirrors. Nor does it help that the mirrors are rather small.

Although the 1.6 TDI is only available in base Attraction spec, true to the German formula, it comes with a lengthy list of upgrade options on wheels, audio, trim and interior and driver comforts. You can specify them individually or in compellingly priced bundles – for example, the $2K Technik package on our test car covers xenon headlamps, single-zone climate control air and rear parking beepers.

At Attraction level, you can pick between petrol or diesel for the same money – the 1.6 TDI and the 1.4 TFSI both start at $29,900.

At least until we go into self-shifting options, the petrol’s the go. An official 5.3L/100km combined does not make for costly running, even on PULP.

But once the S-tronic option comes into the picture, the 1.6 TDI starts to look like a terrific $30K’s worth for premium light car buyers.

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