Audi A3 Cabriolet 2013 Review - International

OVERVIEW

And, he told motoring.com.au, people didn’t like it. They wanted a convertible Golf to have a soft-top and they wanted it to be a more manageable size.

But the engineering for the abandoned generation of the Golf Cabrio had mostly been done and Audi thought it would be a shame to waste it, so the A3 Cabriolet was born, pulling former Golf Cabrio owners upstream.

Hackenberg should know the back story because he was at Volkswagen at the time (still is, as head of the Group’s powertrain development) and he has a pretty good grasp of the future story, too.

This is the first A3 Cabriolet to be based on the Group’s MQB small-to-mid-size architecture (another Hackenberg-driven project) and that makes it not only stiffer, stronger and easier to build, but lighter, too.

It will arrive in Australia early next year, though it’s not confirmed which of its three engines. A 1.4-litre petrol four kicks things off and there’s also a 1.8-litre petrol four (both with turbocharging, direct-injection and variable valve timing and lift), plus a 2.0-litre turbo-diesel, all averaging 12 per cent lower emissions.

Hackenberg also dropped strong hints that a more powerful 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol four would arrive a year or so later.

They all drives the front wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox or optional DSG dual-clutch transmission and, for the first time, the A3 Cabrio will also have quattro all-wheel drive as an option.

Oh, and it has a bigger boot than before, with the option of folding down the rear seats to push through longer stuff. That’s new, too.

While prices haven’t been fixed for Australia, they didn’t shift much in the move from the old A3 to the new one, so there’s no reason they should move much at the convertible end of the family.

Like the A3 hard-tops, the cabriolet gets pretty much everything you’re used to, all pivoting around the ultra-slim, 11mm-thick multi-media screen that slides up out of the top of the dash. You know, like the BMW ones look like they do, even if they’re permanently attached.

Its images are rich and 3D, thanks to a Tegra 2 T20 processor from Nvidia, and you can control it all via the touchpad on top of the large control knob or the knob itself. Whatever’s easier.

You can turn the cabin into a rolling wifi hotspot (offering up to 100MB per socond), too, with enough reach for eight devices (or two each, if you fill every seat).

Leather is the go in every seat, too, and on the gear lever and the steering wheel, along with dual-zone climate-control air-conditioning, seat heating and an optional neck heater, with a fan built into the base of the head restraint.

Like the rest of the A3 range, it gets a dazzling array of active safety equipment ranging from traffic sign recognition to adaptive cruise control and from side assist and lane-keeping assist to a parking assistant that does everything but squeeze the pedals for you.

There is also the Audi Drive Select system, which changes the character of the car’s steering, throttle response, sound and fuel economy at the touch of a button. If you choose the optional magnetic dampers, it also tweaks the ride and sportiness.

And on top of that are the optional full LED headlights.

And they were both very good cars that surprised pretty much everybody who drove them.

This time around, the convertible version of the (now) 2 Series will have to wait until about six months after the 2 Series Coupe. Given the 2 Series Coupe will be shown at January’s Detroit show for the first time, that will see the convertible arrive mid-year and it might be here for spring 2014.

But where is Mercedes in all of this? The usual suspect doesn’t play at this end of the convertible field. It has a convertible E-Class, but that car is actually a convertible C-Class with an E-Class-shaped body. And the shape of the A-Class hardly lends itself to chop-topping.

The French have yet to shake off their infatuation with folding metal roofs, so can’t be considered direct rivals and that leaves Japan. And, hmm. Nope, nothing there, either.

But there is a genuine possibility that hasn’t arrived yet: Volkswagen’s Golf Cabrio. Funny how the circle closes, isn’t it? In GTI form, the Golf Cabrio isn’t miles away from A3 Cabriolet money, size, weight, performance, luggage capacity…

The base version of the A3 Cabriolet weighs 1345kg and a body-in-white that’s 28kg lighter than its predecessor is a key to saving 60kg overall. Lighter metals haven’t been ignored, with Audi using aluminium for the bonnet and the support structure for the nose, which has the added benefit of shifting the weight distribution further rearwards.

Thanks to this (and to stretching the front axle 40mm further forward while tilting the engines back 12 degrees), around 44 per cent of the A3 Cabriolet’s weight now sits over the rear axle.

Even the engines themselves haven’t been immune to the axe, with the 1.4-litre TFSI engine losing 21kg over its predecessor (it’s now 107kg, if you’re interested). Its move to an aluminium crankcase is a big factor and even the pistons are now aluminium.

It hasn’t hurt its performance, with the 1395cc motor generating 92kW of power and 200Nm of torque from 1400rpm. The direct-injection motor uses cylinder-on-demand to shut off the middle two cylinders during low-demand periods (like cruising at a constant throttle).

It steps it up with the 1.8-litre motor. Based off the same family architecture, the bigger petrol four has 132kW of power and 250Nm of torque from 1250 to 5000rpm. It combines direct and indirect fuel-injection so each system can play its part in reducing fuel economy by doing what it does best, when it does it best. It adjusts the timing of both the intake and exhaust camshafts and varies the lift on the valves as well. Oh, and there’s a turbocharger, too.

More expensive than both of these models is the sole family diesel, the 2.0-litre TDI with 110kW of power and 340Nm of torque. It’s not without its tweaks, with Audi shuffling its pair of balancing shafts from its oil pan into the crankcase.

It also has a quattro option, which sees the multi-plate, electronically controlled centre diff sitting at the tail end of the prop shaft, just ahead of the rear differential.

One of the usual issues with a soft-top is that, when you’re running in open-sky mode, the unwanted roof folds up into the boot and steals all the luggage space. That still happens here, but less than it did.

When the roof is up, the A3 Cabriolet offers 320 litres of luggage space and it keeps 280 litres of that when the lid k-folds back down again. That’s the same, too, if you order the optional acoustic roof, with another two layers of insulation.

Unlike its predecessor, Audi has engineered the A3 Cabriolet so you can drop its rear seats and boost the luggage space to 680 litres, but don’t expect the sort of wide, flat shape it normally gives. It still needs all that rear bulkhead rigidity.

One of the keys to the A3 Cabriolet’s interior packaging is that it rides on the same 2.6-metre wheelbase as the three-door hatch version, but the car ends up around 180mm longer than its predecessor and it’s also 60kg lighter.

It’s a full four-seater, like its predecessor, though it has more rear legroom than before. Headroom is about the same, which means rear-seat passengers don’t have to duck down whenever the roof is being raised or lowered, which is just as well because it can do either at up to 50km/h. It doesn’t happen that quickly, though, at 18 seconds.

It’s not an MX-5 and it’s not a wannabe Boxster. It’s effectively an A3 hatch with the potential to run without a roof. Live with the A3 Cabriolet with this in mind and it earns more and more respect the more you drive it.

We drove only the 1.8-litre TFSI version, which is the one that will most likely headline the A3 Cabriolet’s Australian act, and dig as we might, there isn’t much to thoroughly criticise.

Oh, there’s a degree of tardiness in the roof’s opening and closing speed, but given that its neat folding arrangements retain so much more boot space than before (and given that the only strain involved is flicking up one button), we can live with that.

It’s also extremely quiet with that roof fixed in the up position and looks neat either way.

Fitting the wind blocker keeps things calm in the cabin, allowing normal conversations at up to 200km/h and delivering very little buffeting. Of course, that robs you of rear-seat real estate, but it’s not a bad idea if there’s only two people to carry.

The powertrain is familiar and, apart from the lid-lifting button, so is the rest of the cabin, so we won’t dwell on it.

What we will dwell on is the car’s ability to eat corners, crests, cambers and culverts like a car with a fixed steel roof. It’s an astonishing piece of engineering, really.

We found the car rode convincingly over most surfaces at most speeds, then could swing through mountain bends behind Monaco – Monte Carlo Rally roads – so fast and so easily that it would take a very well driven sports car to stay with it.

The new A3 Cabriolet is capable of carrying barely legal speeds through corners and the lovely four-cylinder has a strong, smooth, linear power delivery, even if it’s never going to be invited on stage at the Sydney Opera House.

It tricks you into believing it’s even more than it is, largely because it does its own job so convincingly that you really can start to believe there isn’t much it can’t do.

Audi’s smallest cabrio is a car for all seasons, all roads, all weathers. It’s not a car for all people, but it’s hard to imagine anybody being disappointed with it.

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