GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: Audi Q2 revealed

After fighting on with three SUVs, Audi is about to bombard the world with the things, starting with the city-focused Q2.

While its key rivals at BMW, Mercedes-Benz and even Lexus have swamped the world with SUVs, Audi has just the new Q7, the aging Q5 and the Q3, which it introduced in 2011.

The Q2 breaks the visual mould of Audi SUVs, looking lighter, leaner, cleaner and altogether less conservative than its big brothers in the line-up.

And, critically, when it goes on sale in Europe in the third quarter of this year (and the first quarter of next year in Australia), the Q2 won’t necessarily even be all-wheel drive, which is a bit odd coming from a company that built its modern reputation on quattro all-wheel drive technology.

Audi insists the younger audience it’s targeting with the Q2 can live without the added weight and cost of AWD and that, with city living at the core of the car’s reason for existing, it’s not even that necessary, though sitting the driver high enough for better vision is.

It will also be a lot cheaper than the Q3, which starts at $42,900 in front-drive form, and a lot smaller, too. At 4.19 metres long, the Q2 is 195mm shorter than the Q3, even if its 2.6-metre wheelbase is just 3mm shorter. So, it’s a short-overhang car at both ends.

Showing just how much smaller the Q2 production car will sit, the entry-level front-drive Q2 will use an 85kW 1.0-litre three-cylinder petrol engine and weigh only 1205kg.

There will be bigger, stronger four-cylinder engines and all-wheel drive is standard on the flagship 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol and diesel versions, and optional on the rest, but Audi’s not pushing the take-up rate over front-drive.

None of that particularly screams 'Audi' to most people, but the entire idea is to appeal to people for whom even the tiny A1 seemed a bit stodgy.

It’s the first production car to emerge with the full imprimatur of fresh design boss Marc Lichte on it, even though you’d be hard pressed to find a direct physical relationship between it and his team’s first Audi effort, the gorgeous prologue concept car.

The immediate impact of the new pencils in Audi’s design department is immediately obvious with the huge, chamfered cut running down the length of the passenger compartment, where normal Audis would have their usual razor-sharp crease lines.

Designed and conceived for a younger, more urban audience than any Audi before it, the Q2 will also deliver Audi buyers the full MINI-style level of individualisation in its five-seat cabin.

Even as it’s gone younger in the car’s look and body surfacing, the Q2 has been crammed with every piece of technology the Volkswagen Group could give it at the not-yet-announced price, which should be in the $30,000s.

It helps its urban usefulness that its 405 litres of luggage space is bigger than Audi gives the A3 Sportback, and it all fits into a body that’s only 1.79 metres wide and 1.51 metres tall.

Even if Audi has favored form-hardened steels and steered clear of using exotic metals in the Q2’s body, it still comes in as a relative lightweight, though it has not revealed what any of the four-cylinder models weigh.

It also has a fair bit of wheelbase length, taking the Volkswagen Group’s MQB architecture as its base, and that has its own rewarding short cuts for Audi to capitalise on.

The top level versions use the Virtual Cockpit, a 12.3-inch high-definition digital display that replaces the analogue speedometer and tachometer, and can be customised to highlight current priorities, like navigation or speed or the audio system. That, and there’s an optional head-up display, too.

There’s also a fixed multimedia screen high in the Q2’s dashboard, with a larger one for the MMI navigation plus system and a smaller one as standard.

It contains the car’s navigation, entertainment, internet and car set-up details, and is controlled by a rotary push-knob and two auxiliary buttons on the central transmission tunnel.

Besides the larger multimedia screen, the MMI navigation plus delivers an integrated wifi hotspot, a free Audi connect application for smartphones and free media streaming. It also serves as the interface that hooks iOS and Android smartphones up to the Apple Car Play and Android Auto systems in the car.

Top-end versions will have the option of a 750-Watt 14-speaker Bang & Olufsen sound system.

Using MQB as the base for the Q2 allowed Audi to dive into the family parts bin, easily giving the Q2 things like self-parking for both parallel and 90-degree parking places, plus a radar system to warn the driver (and autonomously brake) of unseen potential crashes when he/she is reversing out again.

It also brakes itself when the car is going forward if it senses the driver’s insufficiently diligent about cars or pedestrians meandering into its path, and its optional radar cruise control can take over the braking, accelerating and steering at up to 65km/h.

There is a split/folding bench rear seat that opens to deliver 1050 litres of luggage space, and that gets even more useful with an optional 40:20:40-split rear seat and the optional power-operated tailgate.

The three-cylinder petrol motor is the featherweight entry ticket, then there’s a 1.4-litre turbocharged four-cylinder motor, complete with cylinder-on-demand technology that shuts off the middle two cylinders when the car’s cruising and power demands are low. It delivers 110kW and has all-wheel drive as an option.

The top-end of Q2 town has a 2.0-litre turbo four, complete with direct and indirect fuel-injection and 140kW and standard all-wheel drive, via an electronically controlled multi-plate clutch unit acting as the centre differential.

The base diesel will be a 1.6-litre unit with the same power output as the base three-cylinder petrol engine and will also be front-wheel drive only.

It steps that up with two versions of the 2.0-litre turbo-diesel, one with 110kW and one with 140kW.

The strongest of them will come with all-wheel drive, while the junior 2.0-litre will have it as an option.

All of the Q2’s 2.0-litre engines -- petrol and diesel -- use seven-speed dual-clutch transmissions, while the entry will be available in Europe with six-speed manual gearboxes.

Audi also teases with the promise of plug-in hybrid power “one day” in its life cycle.