“a safe choice for up and coming accountants and lawyers who don’t want to flaunt their prosperity in the faces of their fee paying clients”

The new Audi A6 is big, expensive and understated.

    It is not the sort of car that premiership footballers and other bling devotees will be buying. From the outside, the car has smooth, almost dated, concentric lines. The interior is bland and sombre. Nothing about this car yells “Look at me, I’ve made it”, excepting perhaps the front-end which now sports the huge trapezoidal in-yer-face grille. This is a safe choice for up and coming accountants and lawyers who don’t want to flaunt their prosperity in the faces of their fee paying clients.

    It has plenty of road presence. According to Audi, the A6 is the largest-in-class, making it bigger than its rivals like the BMW 5 Series, Mercedes E-class and Jaguar S-Type.

    The new A6 was new from the ground up when it was launched in 2004, and I have to say right at the start that the version I drove recently – the A6 3.0 TDI quattro – was a magnificent beast. The V6-diesel is a gem. Audi claims the motor will return 33.2 mpg (8.5 l/km) but I only managed 29.2 mpg (9.7), in very favourable circumstances for fuel economy. The diesel motor performs very well and sounds great while it’s doing it. There is a 4.2 litre V8 version, but with prices starting at £43,000 (65,000 euros) and fuel consumption running at a claimed combined 23.9 mpg (11.8) this version is always going to be a minority pursuit. The A6 range includes a 2.4 litre V6 petrol, 3.2 litre V6 petrol, some with direct injection, and there’s a 2.0 litre four-cylinder diesel, and a 2.7 litre V6 diesel.

    Stand out
    The 3.0 litre direct injection turbo diesel is the stand out of the range when you juggle power, price and economy. The engine develops 225 bhp and although it doesn’t mathematically have all the get up and go of the V8, you’d never know it. The pickup is instant and linear, the roar from engine sweet and sophisticated. Using the tiptronic manual override on the 6-speed auto box the car always felt in the right gear on sweeping bends and at cruising speed on the highways.

    I loved features like the readout on the dashboard of exactly which automatic gear you were in all the time. You can change gear by snicking down to “S” for Sport mode, or push the lever to the left to activate manual. The tiptronic works a treat and gives instant fingertip changes up and down, and moves seamlessly back into automatic mode if you lay off gear changing for a few seconds.

    Faultless
    Handling felt faultless, but perhaps without the panache you’d expect from a BMW. The steering was light for parking and slow-speed manoeuvring, and firmed up at speed. Needless to say, if you don’t drive the car like an idiot, it will handle perfectly. I’ll leave the boy-racer car magazines and failed racing driver TV bores to tell you what happens if you childishly find a way to switch off the computerised aids to road-holding and stability.

    The A6 cabin is impressive, but without the classy luxury of a Jaguar S-type, or the ergonomic simplicity of a BMW 5-series. The Mercedes E class cabin wins in this race. The A6 dash board seems a bit cluttered and not particularly stylish. There is bags of room as you would expect from the biggest car in its class, so much in fact that I felt there was too much space between my arm and the door armrest when sitting in the front passenger seat.

Auto Union racing
    When you see the new Audi A6 in your rear view mirror you still get a shock. The car has what Audi calls a bold, new face, but it also describes it as “a trapezoidal ….. single-frame radiator grille”. The grille is meant to remind us of Auto Union racing cars in the 1930s. The design is much deeper, and decidedly more aggressive, than the old one, but retains the familiar badge with four interlocking circles. It is also incorporated into the steering wheel design. This new “face of Audi” now appears on new cars across the range.

    Standard safety features abound, including the latest computerised braking and traction control, and air bags which protect against accidents intruding from the front, side and rear. Some air bags deploy in stages depending on the severity of the collision. An electronic handbrake frees up space between the driver and front seat passenger.

    See around corners
    You can have radar cruise control which controls the speed of the car depending on surrounding traffic. The A6 can be fitted with high tech headlights which see around corners. Audi says this means the driver can detect possible danger earlier than conventional lighting. My car had adaptive air suspension; cost £1,500/€2,200.

    Prices for the range start at about £25,000/€36,300. My car – the A6 3.0 TDI Quattro starts at £31,200 (€45,300), but stretched up to a eye-popping £43,565 (€63,300) with all the extras including, leather seats, sat-nav, heated/ electrically powered front seats, tiptronic automatic, xenon lights, automatic boot lid, walnut trim and folding door mirrors. 

    When I first drove this car in 2004, I said how difficult it was to make a choice in this sector.

    “All the cars drive beautifully, all go like stink, even the diesels. So it’s probably down to the ultra subjective view of how they look and how you feel the brand will look on you. My first thought would be to go for the BMW, but I still have doubts about its looks. The Jaguar is superb, as is the Merc and the Audi. By the time I make my mind up maybe the new Lexus GS300 will be on the market. If that has a diesel, maybe I’ll go for that.”

    Since then, the Lexus GS has been redesigned. It looks wonderful, but still doesn’t have a diesel. Let’s wait for the hybrid Lexus GS then. That should be available sometime in 2006.