Audi A3 2012 Review - International

Not so much:
>> Is the body shape new enough?
>> Ride is a bit firm on 18-inch tyres?
>> Optioned up, it’s at A4 prices?

With the A1 around in both three and five-door versions, the A3 has been moved to a more premium position. That means its interior packs more space and a more luxuriant feel, its exterior delivers styling cues with edges so sharp they could cut paper and Audi insists its powertrain refinement has been moved up to match.

Launched initially in three-door form (the five-door A3’s are almost a year away), it’s bigger inside, but about the same size outside. It’s more economical and has a smoother ride.

It’s also the Volkswagen Group’s most critical car of the decade, because it’s the first machine to sit on top of the all-new MQB small car architecture. This Modular Transverse Matrix (which translates as MQB in German), which will slash production and development costs across the board, means the sharing of basic chassis design, electronics, fuel systems and even suspension systems.

It will underpin every front-drive small to mid-sizer in the burgeoning VW Audi Group (VAG). Thus, MQB will eventually replace the mechanicals that underpin Polo, Beetle, Golf, Scirocco, Jetta, Tiguan and Touran, all the way up to cars the size of the Sharan, Passat and the CC. And that’s just the VWs. It will also provide the basic architecture for everything from Audis and Volkswagens to Skodas and Seats.

So the first cab off the rank needs to be a cracker.

We’ve previewed the all-new interior as far ago as January, when Audi showed it at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but it looks and feels even better in a real car.

It’s almost plain inside at first glance, with a broad spread of dashboard in front of the passenger, but the more you look the more you find. Indeed, it’s an interior that just reeks of precision and practicality and it feels cutting edge.

The switchgear is new with toggle switches on the centre console replacing the old four-button system to move between the navigation, car setup, radio and entertainment sources. Instead of having a volume knob and two buttons to move back and forth for radio stations or music selections, the volume knob now doubles as a toggle switch to do both jobs. Instead of needing real estate for the touchpad, which lets you write in commands with a fingertip, you now do that on top of the MMI knob.

The result is one of the cleanest cabins going around, and includes a sleek new MMI screen that is 11mm thin and has a 3D effect. It's all topped off by a wrap-around boundary at the top of the dash, before the windscreen, much like the A7 and the A8.

There are three A3 packages at the start, (Attraction, Ambition and Ambient), with S Line packages above them. The upper-level models ride 15mm lower than the Attraction, though Audi has wisely made the lower ride height a delete option so you can have the looks along with the added ride comfort granted by more suspension travel.

The base engine will be the turbocharged petrol 1.4-litre TFSI (without cylinder deactivation) and it will land in Germany at €22,500 -- though the spec doesn’t include much of anything. The Ambition is supposed to have the sportiest feel, the Attraction is the “contemporary” (read: base) package and Ambient is the luxury pack.

The Attraction line gets cloth seats and black or grey interior styling, the Ambition line also gets cloth seats (though with a better trim and more bolstering), while Ambient has leather seats, ambient interior lighting and a wider choice of interior colours.

Besides its sports seats, the Ambition also arrives with 17-inch wheels and tyres, a chrome exhaust and the Audi Drive Select as standard gear.

Ambient uses a four-spoked leather wheel, cruise control, a central armrest and a generally more luxurious interior package, offset with 16-inch wheels that almost everybody will upgrade to 17-inch alloys anyway.

Dual-zone air conditioning is standard, Audi Drive Select is optional (and a must-have, in our opinion) and allows the driver to change the way the car runs. You can flick between an economy mode, a comfort mode, a dynamic mode and an automatic mode, or you can fiddle around to come up with your own preferences on an Individual setting.

For us on European roads, that usually means a combo of comfort suspension, sports steering, automatic transmission and sports throttle response.

Alongside the standard audio system, you can upgrade to a connectivity pack to enable satnav, then there’s a better sound system with six-channel amplification and 10 speakers. At the top of the audio options is a Bang & Olufsen package with 14 active speakers and a 750 Watt amplifier.

Besides leading the way in chassis architecture, the A3 will be the first Audi with the brand’s new Modular Infotainment Platform, designed to help car electronics (traditionally hamstrung by their long, long lead times) keep up with consumer electronics.

The key to this is a Multi Media eXtension board, which is a replaceable plug-in module in a glovebox-mounted computer. Audi can just rip it out and bung in a new one and voila, up-to-date consumer electronics in the A3.

There’s also the option of using the car as a rolling wifi hotspot and Google Earth and, even, Google Street View on the new, sharper Tegra 2-powered screen.

There are plenty of non-infotainment features, too, including new or upgraded driver assistance systems. It starts with the option of radar cruise control, which can brake the car down to a stop and then keep pace with light-throttle work, like you need in heavy traffic. It also brings big-boy safety features like active lane assist which now allows the driver to vary its sensitivity, and there are two front, side and head airbags and a driver’s knee airbag in case that all goes wrong.

A six-year engineering odyssey, MQB has saved around 60kg on the outgoing A3’s architecture. It also features hot-formed steels that are six times stronger than the usual steel sheets, uses lighter electrical systems (but makes them do more work) and has an aluminium-rich suspension. But it won’t stop there, because it’s been designed to quickly and easily have cost taken out of it for cheaper brands like Skoda and SEAT and more put into it for cars like the Audi A3.

The MQB will not only allow for different sizes of cars, but it’s also pre-engineered for a range of safety innovations, electrical architectures, different drive systems and it’s even future proofed for consumer electronics innovations.

And even the designers love it, because it stretches the distance between the front wheels and the windscreen pillars and reduces the front overhang, which promises cleaner proportions.

There have been plenty of previous chassis that could be stretched or shrunk to accommodate bigger or smaller cars, but this architecture will slash the VW Group’s costs by also stretching and shrinking the same electrical wiring systems, the same engines, the same transmissions and the same ventilation setups.

The MQB will be based around the exact same engine mounting points for every car it sits beneath, including two all-new modular VW Group engines. It has also found space for existing and (some) future drive systems, such as natural gas, electric drive and hybrid drive, and the Golf 7 will have a 20kW electric motor when its hybrid debuts next year.

For now, the A3 will offer three engines: a 2.0-litre turbodiesel and two TFSI turbocharged petrols. Fuel economy has dropped 12 per cent across the range.

The big TDI will be a massive seller in Europe and Audi hopes it will make early inroads in Australia, so it can drop its 1.6-litre TDI in later on.

The new engine is a 1968cc in-line four, complete with long-stroke architecture and running its two balancer shafts inside the crankcase instead of the oil pan. Its common-rail fuel-injection system pumps at 1800 bar and variable vane turbocharging helps it to 110kW. The key number, though, is its 320Nm from 1750-3000rpm.

It pulls to 100km/h in 8.6 seconds but uses only 4.1L/100km on the combined fuel economy cycle and emitting 106 grams of fuel. Its 50-litre fuel tank will generate considerable range.

The base petrol engine is the new 1.4-litre TFSI mill, which was new from the ground up when it made its debut in the A1 Sportback earlier this year.

Weighing just 107kg (and featuring a diecast aluminium crankcase), the 1.4 gets a twin-scroll turbocharger, direct fuel-injection and variable valve timing and (down to a thousandth of a millimetre) valve lift. The new crankcase saved 18kg, new connecting rods are also lighter and Audi even cut 1.8kg from the turbocharger.

It’s a 90kW motor, though clever turbocharging delivers its maximum torque (200Nm) from 1400rpm – which is even lower than the TDI’s peak. Thus it’s not much slower in a sprint, either, getting to 100km/h in 9.3 seconds. Combined consumption of 5.2L/100km is a nine per cent improvement.

In the near future, the A3 will come with the Cylinder On Demand (also known as cylinder deactivation) version of this engine which will have, oddly, more power (103kW) and more torque (250Nm) but lower consumption (4.9L/100km).

The Big Rig of the petrol motors is the 1.8-litre TFSI four, with 250Nm from 1250rpm and 132kW.

It uses indirect injection at light throttle openings to squirt fuel next to the inlet manifold’s tumble flaps to give a better mix, then it switches to direct injection at both start up and at higher loads.

Like the 1.4 TFSI, the 1.8 is a relative lightweight at 140kg fully dressed.

So equipped the new A3 gets to 100km/h in 7.2 seconds. It reaches 232km/h at its top end and uses 5.6L/100km on the combined cycle, which is more than competitive with its little brother and 13 per cent better than the old car.

As time goes on, the A3 will get a 77kW 1.6-litre TDI with 3.8L/100km, plus a natural gas version and a hybrid – and then there’s an S3 and an RS3 in the pipeline.

It’s not just a front-driver, either, because the car is pre-engineered for all-wheel drive. The Quattro versions only come later this year in the most powerful engine versions with the seven-speed double-clutch S Tronic. The 1.4 TSFI and the 2.0-litre TDI will initially receive a six-speed manual gearbox.

The chassis uses a four-link rear suspension in concert with a MacPherson strut front end, and aims it all with an electro-mechanical power steering system. It’s designed to ride on everything from 205/55 R16 to 225/40 R18 tyres.

The critical measurements that define the MQB in the A3 are these: its wheelbase is 23mm longer (to 2601mm), its front overhang is shorter and it’s 12mm wider (1777mm).

The new seats need less room, so that alone has given the A3’s interior another 15mm of front headroom and there’s 16mm more headroom in the rear. There is now enough space to sit three adults adequately in the back seat and it’s even easier to get in and out, too.

The door pockets are large, too, coping comfortably with large water bottles in grooves designed to accommodate them at an easy-to-reach angle, much like in the A4.

Typically, the luggage area is both clever and large, with 365 litres of flat area and a floor that can be placed at two levels – one level with the loading lip and one a few centimetres below it. The seats also fold flat to give 1100 litres of luggage capacity.

Like the A3, the A-Class will be a car that adds a more luxuriant look and youthful feel to what was once almost exclusively a retiree’s car. It will also spawn a sleeker four-door sedan, an SUV and a coupe, so Benz has as much riding on its new architecture as Audi does.

BMW will counter the A3 threat by releasing the five-door version of the 1 Series, itself all-new last year. Of the Big Three German premium brands, the BMW is the only rear-driver, so expect it to keep playing up perceived dynamic advantages. But that’s not all they have up the sleeves of the red-checked Bavarian shirts they tuck into their lederhosen.

BMW will hit the Paris Motor Show in October with a front-wheel drive 1 Series-sized “concept”. Based around the MINI’s front-drive architecture, it will be softer than the firm-riding “British” cars and will be sold as a 2 Series alongside the rear-drive offerings.

A resurgent Volvo isn’t letting the Germans have it all their own way, though, with its soon to be released V40 providing genuine competition on the road, if not yet in the showrooms.

But the biggest competition may yet come from the next-generation Volkswagen Golf, which will make its debut at the Paris Motor Show in October. Based on the same architecture, with engines and transmissions from the same family, it will provide stiff in-house competition.

The tiny thin MMI screen (it folds away when you don’t want it) feels far more on the consumer-electronics’ pace than any of its contemporaries and its graphics are brilliantly sharp.

The seats on the base car could be more supportive but the two upper levels offer a terrific combination of both support and comfort.

But it’s the whole ambience of the cabin that impresses. It could feel a little empty, but it grows almost instantly in your esteem because everything is so precisely organized. Every line has a purpose, every crease draws your eye to something important and even the air vents are exquisitely detailed.

It’s practical, too. The air conditioning controls take up only a fraction of the space needed in rival models, the controls for the MMI are incredibly simple to use and the only wasted space seems the little surface area on the bottom spoke of the steering wheel.

We wondered, whether for either right hand-drive markets (or the left-handed folk in the left-hook world), that might be utilized for the touchpad instead of forcing us to use our left hands to write with.

All three engines start up with incredible isolation, but a sweet sound.

The diesel is the one with the most purpose to its song at idle. It’s also the strongest everyday player, too, coming in a package with 17-inch optional alloys and a dual-clutch seven speeder.

It’s a strong, strong motor and has no trouble shifting the A3’s 1280kg weight decisively. It’s crisp in its throttle response and effortless in its midrange overtaking and it still spins quite effectively to its upper reaches.

Yet, for all the work it’s asked to do, it sends no tremors of protest back through into the cabin. There’s all the aural charm of a smoothed-out diesel, all depth and strength, but none of the chainsaw-hand effect you get in lesser oilers.

It’s never going to provide a sparkling drive – not compared to the rear-drive 1 Series -- but the A3 is a far sharper device than it’s been in the past. The occasional big bump can give it a thump but otherwise its body control is excellent and the ride/handling compromise leaves the driver fully aware of what’s happening at the contact points without the information overload that could make its predecessor feel unnecessarily harsh at times.

It’s also incredibly forgiving and immensely trustworthy, even on bumpy, off-camber corners, and it is silky quiet on highways, too. Our advice would be to ignore the lower S Line suspension setup and soak up the added comfort of the extra 15mm of travel, because most people are unlikely to need the dynamic benefits of the stiffer setup.

There’s nothing about the car that ever even verges down into “moderately pleasant” territory because the combination of the silken gearbox, the grunty diesel and the all-new chassis give so much and ask so little.

It can be thrown into corner with complete faith in its ability to get out again, it can be asked to flow through a series of high-speed sweeps or it can be to-and-fro-ed in stop-start traffic, all with the same aplomb.

The petrol engines are more of the same, even if the 1.4 TFSI is deceptively strong in its midrange and the quietest of the engines on offer and the six-speed manual is an absolute joy to fling through its crisp gates. It’s not the smoothest engine, though, because the 1.8-litre TFSI motor is the engine to have.

It’s not only the fastest but it’s the most fun. It has economy you can live with, strength you can’t help but find and it revs cleanly out to the redline. None of the launch motors bother you with vibrations, anywhere in the rev range, but the 1.8 is the silkiest of all.

Apart from the price of the options (which are yet to be determined in Australia) there are, it turns out, no real weak links in the A3’s armoury.

To Benz and BMW and Volvo and Lexus, good luck.

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