Audi A4 2015 Review

There's a place just outside the city of Freiburg where ailing Germans come for rehabilitation. There is a resort that specialises in it, filled with physiotherapists and medical specialists of every stripe.

This connection and location is enough to make you wonder whether Audi was being a bit cheeky when it invited us to join the all-new A4's final validation drive. But it you needed proof the drive was the real deal, the presence of all of the car’s senior development engineers and the ubiquitous Professor Doctor Ulrich Hackenberg, VW Group’s effective head of all things engineering, should have been enough.

The new B9 generation A4 has been pounded mercilessly since official pictures last month made it clear that the car was visually a clone of the last series. Via this drive Audi wants, quickly, to turn the public focus from the outside to the inside — before the too-old internet mantra became a wider perception.

If any car needed rehabilitation before it was even on sale, it was this one (And the Q7, if we're being honest).

Fortunately, the company has every right to feel confident. The car is very likely to be a new class leader. Indeed, Audi has addressed every area where it had weaknesses (even perceived) to its German premium foes and built on the parts where it was already in front.

The A4 no longer feels like a front-wheel drive car – no woollen, light steering that does its best to mask anything from the road. There's no understeer fallback just when you're getting interested. No longer does the word "sporty" translate to "bounce vertically on bumps".

Five-link suspension setups at both ends contribute to a ride more in keeping with Jaguar's mythology than Audi's. The controlled, comfortable, finessed ride quality is complemented by whisper-quiet passage through the air, helped by mirrors relocated to the doors (a la Passat). Both properties – NVH and ride – lend the new A4 an air of sophistication at least a class above it, maybe two.

The new A4 builds on the previous standards set for interior design, trim quality and feel, and it's safer, both in crash and in crash avoidance. Every one of the 27 sensor-based safety features introduced on the more-expensive Q7 is offered in the A4, at least as an option.

There is an analogue dashboard for the European entry-level models, but most buyers will plump for the fully digital Virtual Cockpit instrument cluster.

The sedan is 110kg lighter than the B8 despite being stiffer, offers a 140kW, Miller Cycle four-cylinder petrol engine that posts 4.8L/100km on the NEDC cycle and is offered in both front and all-wheel drive. That economy figure looks even better when compared to the nearest comparative BMW, the 320i, which only manages 6.0L/100km, and the C250 Benz, which posts 5.3L/100km.

There are two diesels in the A4 range sliding easily beneath 100g/km, without the complexity of plug-in hybrid technology (on the way, nevertheless), and a pair of V6 turbo-diesels. The thriftiest, the 2.0-litre TDI Ultra, gets 3.7L/100km, while the base 3.0-litre V6 TDI is just half a litre thirstier.

On the petrol side, V6 fans will have to wait for the S4, and its all-new V6 engine, in 2017.

First up, though, we had Dr Hackenberg showing us around. Admitting the triumvirate of Sales and Marketing boss Luca de Meo and design boss Marc Lichte and Dr Hackenberg himself arrived too late to do much to the exterior design, they instead focused on getting the most out of what the A4 could carry beneath its skin.

The grille is wide and low, with the bonnet sitting so low that it needs pyrotechnics to lift it up if the car strikes pedestrians. Right now, though, these are pre, pre-production cars and they're focused on getting all the shut lines right and finding out any wear and tear issues that might translate into production.

That's why Hackenberg is particularly fussy about the intersection of the clamshell bonnet and the crease line along the length of the doors and on into the tail lights. It's a piece that reflects technical prowess in production. It reflects something completely different if the tolerances are more than about half a millimetre!

The car begins to look completely new when you open the doors and climb inside. It's bigger than before. There is plenty of space in the driver's footwell, but the front passenger gets an odd lump coming out of the transmission tunnel, and Hackenberg says the seat in the right-hand drive cars will be 15mm further back to keep the footrest away from it.

We're in a V6 turbo-diesel first, though you'd struggle to notice it at idle. It's a lot quieter than diesels of even five years ago.

The start button has been moved down onto the centre console, Hackenberg says, so you can see it properly. He ordered the column-mounted indicator and wiper stalks lifted up for the same reason.

The car is powered by the entry V6, with 160kW and, from only 1250rpm, 400Nm from its 2967cc. Its strength is immediately evident, but so is the sophistication. Mostly...

The car drives away smoothly, with its newly found steering accuracy evident immediately. There's a weight to it, even in the comfort and auto settings of the Audi Drive Select system. Once you start swinging into the corners, you quickly appreciate that it's not just accurate on the way in to corners, but offers just enough feedback without being intrusively busy and winds off again with an intuitive progression.

It's even better in the sport mode, where it has a little more heft and allows more feel from the road, but Hackenberg insisted it doesn't just get heavier for the sake of reminding you it's sporty. He hates that.

The understeer that defined the B8 has gone, too. It's replaced with a balance that belies the A4's traditions, which is helped by having 60 per cent of the torque going to the quattro's rear end.

The A4 now has a settled poise that involves all four tyres even as the grip runs out without ever threatening to collapse in a pile of front tyre scrub. The suspension is softer at every corner, while thicker anti-roll bars take care of unwanted body roll, and its body control is class leading.

It also rides beautifully, with a clean suppleness that refuses to fall into stiffness, even in the sport mode. It's also accurate to point and easy to place on the road, regardless of your driving commitment levels.

This car's not perfect, though. There is a small vibration running through the accelerator pedal at light throttle openings around 1900rpm, and it's not there on the sibling V6. Hackenberg notes it down and takes the powertrain boffin aside to show him.

The interior design is a bit special, really. Everything fits precisely and looks expensive, right down to the all-digital instrument cluster and the very high-resolution multimedia screen. You wave your fingers at the ventilation controls and the screen above the buttons brings up each menu. Same with the interior lights. Wave your hands at them and they come on, do the same and they switch off.

The glovebox is small, though, and the door pockets aren't as expansive as once they were, though they still take a 1.5-litre bottle.

Hackenberg encourages me to bash stuff, like the dashboard, the door skins, the visors and just about anything I can see. It's the best way, he says, to make sure everything is fitting like it should and to see if there's a lack of solidity behind it. There isn't.

As a 4.73 metre sedan, it has about the same luggage capacity as the B8, though the wagon lifts it to 505 litres and has a 40:20:40 rear seat that can be folded to reveal 1510 litres. It has 23mm more rear legroom than its predecessor (though, presumably, that's only 8mm behind the Australian drivers) and while it's 16mm wider, it's the same height.

Cruising at Australian-style speeds, the A4 is silent, with road and wind noise conquered by North Korean levels of suppression.

It's quick in a straight line, too, and incredibly flexible, whipping through its eight-speed automatic transmission beautifully, with no rough shifts up or down. There's always punch available, but not as much as in the stronger of the V6 diesels.

That car follows, with its 200kW and 600Nm, so you'd expect it to be fast. It is. Audi claims 5.3 seconds to 100km/h and it feels every bit of that, without losing any of the poise of the 160kW version.

It's also stronger everywhere, though not by the margin you'd expect of a car with 50 per cent more torque at 1500rpm. It mounts a good argument to spend up (it only uses 4.9L/100km on the NEDC, for example), without completely blowing away its little brother.

By far the most interesting of the cars we looked at was the B Cycle 2.0-litre turbo petrol motor. Derived from the Miller Cycle strategies last employed in production by Mazda, the 140kW engine has 320Nm but sips fuel like a (slightly thirsty) diesel.

It's also the least ready for production, if our drive is any indication. It has a unique, but not necessarily good, sound. At some revs and throttle openings, it sounds a bit like an engine being flogged inside a big metal can. It's a noise that gets a touch monotonous as the revs rise, because it never changes its timbre, just its volume.

Hackenberg apologises, saying he's already got the acoustics lab working on it and that there's not a chance it will go into production sounding like it does now. Good…

But it's smooth and strong and willing and the good part of the full-throttle noise is that it always gives the impression that it's eager to work, harder and more often. It also runs the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, not the eight-speed auto you get with the quattro models, and it's not quite as smooth or predictable as the hydraulic auto, but it's closer than it's ever been.

The other relief with this car is that it's the first one not riding on Audi's active damper setup. The fixed-rate dampers are more comfort oriented than in the B8 but Audi doesn't expect a high take-up rate on the stock suspension.

It gets complicated, because Audi will offer the A4 with four different suspension settings. There's this stock setup and a sports variant of that, with the ride height slashed by 23mm. The B Cycle car was on the sports variant, yet didn't feel crashy anywhere.

There will also be two active-damping variants, with a comfort version that's 10mm lower than the standard car and a sport version that's also 23mm lower.

We had no night driving, though all models have bi-xenon lights standard and LED and Matrix LED headlights are optional.

There were a few areas where the aging B8 version of the A4 had lagged behind, but they've all been addressed.

We will wait now until its Frankfurt motor show launch to see if all the quirks have been developed out of it. What we can say now is this: if you're looking to replace a mid-sized premium car, it behooves you to wait until you get a chance to see this on Australian roads.

A new benchmark looks like it's almost ready. It could be worth waiting for.