Audi offers five-year warranty, free servicing

Audi has become the latest luxury marque in Australia to extend its factory warranty from three to five years – with a catch.

The German car-maker says all vehicles sold in May and June will be backed by a five-year/unlimited kilometre factory warranty in Australia.

In addition, Audi will offer the same vehicles with five years of free servicing and complimentary on-road and CTP costs – a move that eclipses all rivals within the premium space with the exception of Hyundai’s luxury brand Genesis, which also offers free servicing for the first five years.

Confirming the news during a video conference with Australian media this week, Audi officials said there was no plan to make the five-year warranty permanent, despite similar moves being made by Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar and Volvo recently.

“We have our five-year warranty offer in market right now, but we don’t have any plans to make that permanent but we are always evaluating the market,” said Audi Australia spokesman Shaun Cleary.

“We’ll be very interested to see how our five-year warranty products performs in the coming weeks as well. We respond to our customers’ wishes when it comes to providing the most competitive offer in market at all times. We’ll continue to monitor it.”

Audi Australia marketing boss Nicki Warburton said she had been encouraged by the initial take-up of the extended warranty provisions.

Warburton also declared online sales “here to stay” alongside traditional dealer sales, saying the program has resonated with Australian customers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our plan is to continue to build online sales – it’s something that we feel is very important,” she said.

“We’re really proud of our dealer network. They’ve really quickly changed their businesses – be that with the way they sell and service, or scale their business.

“It’s a tough time for dealers but they’re coping as well as they can.”

Australia’s new-vehicle market shrank by nearly 50 per cent down during the month of April. Within that, the luxury segment sustained considerable losses in sales, and Audi sales were down 17 per cent.

However, Audi believes the downturn is slowly shifting, with green shoots emerging through the first few days in May.

“Indications are that May is certainly improving, however, there is a very different economic environment that we are all operating within at the moment, so no-one knows how soon we can recover,” Cleary said.

Audi Australia says its overseas factories are now back up and running, and expects the anticipated Audi e-tron rollout to continue as planned later this year, despite reduced production of the EV.