GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: New Audi A6 detailed

Audi is sneaking in ahead of the Geneva motor show rush with first images and details of what it promises will be the sportiest A6 it has ever designed.

Promising more luxury and refinement than ever before, the fifth-generation A6 is about to launch a much-needed attack on BMW's 5 Series and Mercedes-Benz's rampant E-Class.

To be launched in Europe in June, Audi's new large sedan and wagon will be heavily based on the just-launched A7 Sportback, alongside which it will arrive in Australia later this year.

Positioned midway between the A7 and Audi's new A8 limousine, which arrives Down Under in June, the A6 will carry over the bulk of the A7's critically acclaimed interior design, but with a greater focus on luxury than its sportier stablemate.

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Packaging and tech

The new A6 is fractionally longer and wider than before, with a 12mm stretch in the wheelbase, a 13mm lift in rear passenger legroom and a 21mm longer cabin area.

Like its traditional domestic German foes, it switches touch-screen operation for its new, larger infotainment system.

It's all based around a new electronic architecture designed to support everything from full Level 3 autonomy to LTE connectivity and car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communications. The navigation system's routes will no longer be calculated by the car, but by the server.

While Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have traditionally been at each other's throats in this market, they all share ownership of the HERE digital mapping service, which they combined to buy off Nokia. The A6's high-definition digital screens now use real-time navigation information from HERE to help avoid traffic problems as they occur.

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New chassis

The A6 will also bring the A7's clever new chassis tricks to the fight, at least for its higher-priced, larger-engined models.

That means three-stage airbag suspension, active electronically controlled anti-roll bars to keep the body flat in hard cornering situations and four-wheel steering will all be available - at a price.

It will also lower the fuel consumption of its petrol-powered engine ranges thanks to a standard 48-volt mild-hybrid system, which uses a belt-driven starter-generator to both capture otherwise-wasted braking energy and provide added urge for the engine when it needs torque most.

It also spells the end of the manual gearbox for the A6. While that's not relevant to Australia, it's very relevant to Europeans, who loved mating the six-speeder to the smaller four-cylinder engines.

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Petrol powertrains

At the start of its sales life in Europe (Audi has already started taking orders), there will only be two engines - one petrol and one diesels - and neither of them feature plug-in hybrid technology.

Audi insists the electrically boosted fuel savers are coming, but for now customers will have to make do with mild-hybrid assistance for the turbocharged petrol V6.

The plug-in A6 will actually hit the showrooms about the same time as Audi's first wave of e-tron battery-electric cars, which will probably render it too little, too late, with its likely slow sales a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In an exact replica of its A7 powertrain strategy, the A6 will begin life as a 55 TFSI, with a 250kW/500Nm 3.0-litre petrol V6, developed in a joint venture with Porsche.

It will be aided by a mild-hybrid that is strong enough to allow the engine to be switched off in low-torque situations between 55 and 150km/h for up to 40 seconds.

It also allows the A6 to use start-stop from 22km/h right up to the car's top speed, coupled to the real-time navigation system, to let the car 'sail' to save fuel.

Audi insists the 48-volt mild-hybrid system cuts out 8g/km of CO2 (or 0.7L/100km), but that's not the only mild-hybrid it has. The cheaper four-cylinder A6s have the belt-driven starter-generator, too, but with a less powerful 12-volt system, which it claims saves only four grams.

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Diesel powertrains

Audi's much-troubled diesel division, has delivered the 55 TDI, with 210kW of power and 620Nm of torque.

This is problematic on two fronts. Firstly, diesel power is not popular in the halls of power or courtrooms in Germany, and secondly, Audi still can't figure out how to deliver this very same diesel engine to its customers (Porsche and Volkswagen) without emissions-cheating engine codes.

Germany's transport authority, the KBA, insists it found five of them in the Cayenne Diesel's engine and a few more in the Macan's, so there'll be a very closer regulatory eye cast over the 55 TDI and its offspring.

There are plans for a cheaper 170kW/500Nm version of this same engine (dubbed 45 TDI), while there's a 150kW/400Nm four-cylinder 40 TDI coming later.

This last A6 is the odd one out, because it will arrive first as a front-wheel drive (though it will have all-wheel drive as a later option).

All the diesels will use exhaust gas recirculation systems and filters, while even the petrol V6 will use a particulate filter to clean up its emissions.

It's probably easier to clean up internal combustion emissions if there is less internal combustion, so Audi is likely to show its first A6 plug-in hybrid (and a long-wheelbase layout) in electrification-crazy China during April's Beijing motor show.

There's a torque limit on the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, with the S-tronic designated only for up to 500Nm. It will find its way into the 2.0-litre TDI and the base V6 turbo-diesel, while the rest of the range will use eight-speed hydraulic automatic transmissions.

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On the outside

Audi showed its 'prologue' (lower case) concept at the 2015 Los Angeles motor show with no intention of putting it into production, but to give its own designers a baseline to use when they penned the A6, A7 and A8, in particular.

The A6 presents a huge single-framed grille, which is punctuated by lidar (which has its own washer), radar and ultrasonic scanners, and is confrontingly similar to the prologue's grille.

There are three different lighting systems, rising from the stock LED headlights to a pair of seven-unit LED Matrix lights to the top of the middle level, which is an LED HD Matrix light with 16 segments for low beam and another 16 for its high beam.

There are also two rear-light options, including a flash one with a dynamic, full-width blinker.

All of the A6 versions score air curtains around the front wheels, which have themselves moved one notch bigger. Where the fourth-generation A6 used between 16- and 20-inch wheels, the fifth-generation begins at 17 inches and rises to accommodate the largest 255/35 R21 rubber.

The visible feature Audi is forcing people to notice is the enormous rear wheel-arch blister, which it hopes smells a bit of the original ur Quattro.

Some of its core visual signatures were quite late arriving, particularly its edgy, full-length greenhouse shoulder line that begins at the trailing edge of the headlight and blends in to the OLED tail-light shapes.

Audi claims the shoulder line works to reduce the visual height of the car and enlarge the blisters over the rear wheels, but its real job is to make it visually appear a class bigger than it really is.

Oddly, the car made it all the way to a full-size clay model before the designers realised the long line was necessary.

That was fraught with the kind of manufacturing difficulties Audi seems to revel in solving, because the doors are aluminium and the front and rear panels are steel. The issue was to achieve the same ultra-sharp crease lines in the two different metals.

Similarly, the bonnet is so heavily sculpted that it had to pre-shaped, then cool stamped, then heated up and stamped again.

It has had its side mirrors moved from the window frames to the door panels, largely to cut down the wind noise. That move also means the A6 has no clever signature puddle lights. They have a simple light at the bottom of the front-door handles.

Unlike the A7, the A6 uses a full door frame for its six-window length, though its C-pillar has a sportier, thinner treatment that has some hints of its sportier sibling.

Audi insists the A6's 0.24Cd drag coefficient is the best in class, but it was less concerned with that than reducing the interior noise generated by the wind, boasting of far less buffeting at speed.

The S-Line versions will have different styling packages, with far busier front aprons than the standard cars, and they'll be on sale at the Australian launch.

Audi is also developing a new A6 Avant (wagon), but it won't be shown until later in the year.

On the inside

Audi admits it more or less lifted the interior straight from the A7, which is no bad thing, really.

That means a fully digital 12.3-inch instrument cluster, a 10.1-inch touch-screen for the multimedia system in the middle of the dashboard and a 8.6-inch touch-screen unit for the climate control, which doubles as a writing pad.

All the touch-screen pads have haptic and audible feedback, while you can write successive letters and numbers over the top of each other on the bottom screen, resting your wrist on the stubby, flat-topped gear lever.

There are two multimedia options, starting with the base level to the Infotainment Plus system with real-time updates via the LTE system.

It gets even cleverer from there, with each driver able to personalise up to 400 parameters, depending on what they use and prefer, then configure those parameters into each key.

The A8 stepped it up by becoming the first Level 3-capable car for autonomous driving, and both the A7 and the A6 follow the same path.

All three use Audi's zFAS central computer to cram all of the sensor data, including (on the highest-level cars) five radars, one LiDar, 12 ultrasonic sensors, five cameras and a night-vision camera (tucked into the one of the four rings) and convert it all into action, instantly.

While no country yet allows the car to utilise the self-driving capability the A6 will offer to its maximum, Audi allows the car to run as a Level 2 car (so the driver is in control, officially) for up to 30 seconds, with the car controlling all braking, steering and accelerating and lane-keeping.

To do this, it doesn't just rely on data from the car's sensors (plus steering throttle, braking and accelerometer data), but from the navigation system's centimetre-accurate mapping data from HERE and swarm intelligence via the LTE system.

It has 38 driver assistance systems tucked into the higher-level models, but that changes across three car set-up packages a Parking pack, a City pack and a Long-Distance pack.

The parking pack won't be available at the A6's launch because its developers are late, but it is a combination of a garage pilot (like BMW has on its 7 Series) and a parking pilot.

The idea is to move the big Audi into and out of parking spaces remotely, via a smartphone app or the key, with the driver waiting patiently outside until the doors can be opened wider.

The City package focuses on predicted urban hazards, so fits the car with autonomous braking for its front and rear cross-traffic systems and for pedestrians, while the Long-Distance pack maximises the adaptive cruise control's behavior.

But if it's more practical considerations that make or break things, the boot opening is now a full metre wide.

There are other touches. Audi now illuminates all five belt buckles, plus added a two-seal system for all four doors. It's largely for acoustics, but Audi claims it has dust-sealing implications as well.

Underneath

Like the A7 and the A8, the A6 sits on Audi's modular longitudinal matrix (MLB) modular architecture, which has strengthened the A6 against torsional twisting and seen it adopt aluminium in key areas, like the strut towers.

For all that, it's actually heavier than it was, by 30kg or so. Tut, tut, tut.

Part of the reason is that it's a touch bigger, but most of it is because of the added emissions-cleaning hardware and the 48-volt system (the four-cylinder only rises 5kg).

Determined to avoid tripping over the five-metre mark, which is such a psychological barrier in its homeland, the A6 tips in at 4940mm long (up by 7mm). It has added 14mm of width with the blisters to sit at 1888mm and it's 3mm higher, at 1458mm.

It sits on a 2924mm wheelbase, which is 12mm longer than before, and finds 13mm more legroom for the rear-seat passengers. There are small, but significant, rises in front and rear head, shoulder and elbow room, while the car retains the same 530-litre luggage capacity.

Base level cars will run with steel springs and fixed dampers on a suspension straight from the A7. That means a five-link rear suspension and a four-link front end for accurate wheel placement even in difficult situations.

Three additional optional levels are above that, all sitting 20mm lower. They begin with a simple sportier variant of the fixed spring and damper pack, then move to a set of adaptive dampers for the fixed-rate springs, then the flash ones will have three-chamber adaptive air suspension with constantly variable damping.

On top of all-wheel drive and sport differentials, there's also electronically controlled rear-wheel steering, which won't be available with the base A6s.

The system effectively shortens the wheelbase at low speed and lengthens it in high-speed corners for added stability by turning the same direction as the front wheels at low speed and the opposite direction at high speed.

While it improves high-speed stability, the bonus is it cuts a metre out of the new A6's turning circle, pulling it down to 11.1 metres so that it now turns inside the A4 sedan.