2005 Audi A3 test drive impressions

Audi A3 has been released just two months after I bought my current car (an Acura RSX) so I wasn’t exactly looking for a replacement. The A3 is RSX’s direct competitor, however, so I felt compelled to check it out. Audis are particularly attractive to those looking for cars with four-wheel drive. Audi has a long history of making four wheel drive cars, and according to the dealers a four-wheel drive A3 (with a V6 engine, no less) is coming down the pipeline.

The rest of this review will summarize what I was able to learn during a half hour test drive.

Walk-around

The A3 I drove was a base model with a manual 6-speed transmission. The car is actually based on the Golf platform, but this is not at all obvious—Audi A3 looks nothing like a Golf. The car’s design is attractive, with just a touch of aggressiveness to demonstrate its sporting potential.

Interior

All Audi cars are famous for their interiors, and A3 does not disappoint. It is actually difficult to point to one specific thing and say “this is done better than in car X”. Everything is understated and unpretentious, but the overall effect is unmistakable—the second you get in, you know you are sitting in a luxury car. My tester had a cloth interior, and it looked and felt good enough that I wouldn’t pay extra to get leather.

Despite being relatively small, the A3 is a true four-person car. The back seat is relatively roomy, and adults will find them comfortable even on long rides. The front seats are comfortable and supportive, and seem a bit softer than the seats in my Acura. Although long-range comfort is difficult to estimate on a short test-drive, initial impressions are very good.

There is a decent amount of storage space. With the back seats up, the trunk seems on par with the trunks of other small cars. For occasions when you need to haul large amounts of cargo or large objects, the back seats can be folded down, giving you a large flat cargo area in the back of the car. If my experiences with other wagons are anything to judge by, this tiny car will swallow surprising amounts of luggage with ease.

Engine

Let’s take this baby for a spin, why don’t we?… The engine is what this car is all about. A new-fangled, direct-injection turbocharged 2-liter four-cylinder is derived from engines Audi used at the cars they run at the Le Mans 24 hour race. It is very impressive.

The car pulls strongly off idle, and revs willingly. There is plenty of torque available, and I could detect no turbo lag whatsoever. In all normal driving situations—accelerating from a stop, merging on the highway and passing—the engine excels. It makes 200 horsepower at its peak, but unlike some other high-power small-displacement engines, it is not a dog at low revs; the turbocharger undoubtedly should get credit for this. Nothing in life is free, however, and you will pay for this at the pump—the engine needs high-octane fuel to run properly.

While saying this feels a bit like automotive blasphemy, I would claim that this car has enough horsepower, and there is no need to add any more. It would be useful for bragging rights, to be sure, but you wouldn’t be able to use it anyway, at least not on the street.

Transmission

The manual transmission is very good—the shifts are light, the throws are short, and there is good feedback to the driver. The car shifts with surgical precision. For everything from daily commute to spirited driving along the back roads, this transmission will not disappoint.

Oddly enough, I had lots of trouble operating A3’s clutch. The clutch is very light, and that made it hard for me to find the friction point when taking off. I almost stalled several times during the test drive, and several launches that I did were decidedly less than controlled (to the great discomfort of the salesman who was sitting in the passenger seat). While I’m sure that this problem would have disappeared if I had more time to get used to the car, in other cars I do not have this issue at all.

Brakes

The brakes in A3 are good. They are not grabby, so that small speed adjustments are possible. When the pedal is pushed down hard, however, the car slows down very fast. I did an emergency braking test, and the A3 performed admirably—it slowed down from 50 mph to zero seemingly instantly, with very little nose dive.

The car is equipped with ABS but I did not do anything to test it.

Handling and steering

I had little opportunity to test the handling of the car; the high-speed turns were limited to one or two highway on-ramps. Based on this limited experience, I would say the car handles well and predictably.

A3 is equipped with variable-boost steering, an interesting and innovative feature. It provides more steering power assistance at parking lot speeds, and reduces the assistance force as the speed increases. This provides more steering feedback on the highway, but makes it easier to control the car in parking lots. The variable-boost caught me by surprise the first few times: I tended to pull on the steering wheel with a lot more force than necessary.

Ride and noise

The car provides a smooth ride on both surface streets and highways. The suspension strikes a good balance between damping the bumps and providing feedback to the driver.

A3 is noisier than I would expect an entry luxury car to be, although not horribly so. The main source of the noise seems to be the wind; road and engine noise are muffled well. On a long distance ride, the noise will probably be annoying, but not really tiring. I would tend to forgive the noisiness as being one of the cars “quirks”.

Summary

Based on my short test drive, I would say that the A3 is a classy and practical car that is nevertheless fun to drive and has quite a bit of sporting potential. It has the engine, transmission and handling to provide for an entertaining drive, yet all these components are forgiving in day-to-day driving. Driven well, it will embarrass many a car down a twisty road on Saturday, take you, your significant other and two kids to visit the grandparents on Sunday, and get you to work without much fuss on Monday.

The A3 is not cheap, and adding optional equipment can make it even more expensive. The need for premium gas also makes it a bit more expensive to own. That’s the price of admission to the German Luxury Car Ownership Club, however, and you do get the extra prestige and performance in return.

According to the dealer, a V6 and Quattro versions are coming in the next year or so, although the Quattro is rumored to come with an automatic transmission only.