Here is the new Audi A3, the third generation to bear that name. “Are you sure?” you might wonder. “Haven't you used a picture of the old one by mistake?”
Audi has long been strong on family resemblances, and you could argue that it makes the designer's job easier. At best this new car is a facelift of the old one, with current Audi motifs such as the rounded corners on the radiator grille, the headlights with their slender inner sections, and wider rear lights continuing into the tailgate. Or so it seems at first.
Actually, apart from the engines (themselves modified), this is an entirely new car, because underpinning it is the Volkswagen Group's new MQB platform, a modular construction able to be made in various sizes to suit a supermini here, a saloon or mid-size hatchback there.
80KG LIGHTER
This saves money, because it's easy to standardise components. And these savings can be used to improve those components, in particular to make them lighter by using aluminium or high-strength steels. Typically a new A3 weighs up to 80kg less than a similarly engined previous one.
The new car sits on a slightly longer wheelbase but the overall length has not changed. There is more room inside, and a dashboard which manages to break away from the standard Audi layout while retaining an aura of quality. Bright-coloured inserts for seats and doors can be had in “velvet leather” with a suede-like feel, and the air vents are four round works of art. They look like miniature jet engines, and the bright-metal outer rings are shaped for a better grip.
The only bad point is that the new, improved “multimedia interface” requires enough space on the console behind the gear lever to leave no room for a proper handbrake, so we have to suffer an electric parking brake instead.
ON THE ROAD IT’S A REVALATION
If there is a worry as to whether the new A3 will be fun to drive, given the first one was dull and the second little less so, it is soon clear that this model is a revelation. The MQB platform retains the multiple-link rear suspension of the Golf and previous A3, and although copied from a Ford Focus it's a very good system. Here, it is calibrated beautifully, making the car feel fluently precise through corners while soaking up bumps with a nonchalance few drivers of current Audis would recognise.
And that's true even in the versions with bigger wheels, although the cars I drove at launch all had the “standard” suspension. So don't spoil your new A3 with a sportified suspension option.
Three engines are offered at launch in Europe, a 1.4 petrol turbo with 90kW, a 1.8 petrol turbo with 134kW (the raciest option but available only with a seven-speed, double-clutch automatic and, in the UK, that sportified suspension) and a 2.0-litre TDI turbodiesel with 112kW. Others arrive later - as does Quattro four-wheel drive transmission.
RUNS ON TWO CYLINDERS
The two most interesting are a 1.6 TDI with 78kW, a 99g/km CO2 score and a smoothness which more than makes up for gentler progress than the 2.0 offers, and a version of the 1.4 turbo which switches off two cylinders when driven gently. I love this engine; it has a useful 104kW yet you can hear brief snatches of a Citroën-2CV-like two-cylinder thrum. It gives the A3 real personality as well as impressive economy and as much performance as you need. This is the best A3.
But any car from the new range is a desirable object, with a “drive me” character the old A3 never had. Even if the new one does look uncannily like its father.
At this stage the South African engine line-up has yet to be confirmed but all will be revealed closer to its on-sale date in the fourth quarter of this year. -The Independent on Sunday