Audi Gets A for Effort
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- German carmaker’s A4 sedan gets a comprehensive makeover
By Nick Syn
IS IT HARDER to convey the notion of fun than it is the notion of style? Fun is highly subjective when you think about it, Beavis and Butthead are bowel-looseningly hilarious to many people but unfathomably inane to others.
Style, on the other hand, is perhaps less so, as it’s something that the vast majority of us tend to emulate rather than dictate.
There is no question, therefore, that Audi makes beautifully built cars. However, honestly speaking, Audis haven’t strictly matched some rival offerings in the fun stakes.
Luckily, handsome, understated style and an attention to detailing that borders on the obsessive-compulsive go a long way to making up for this.
Take switchgear for example, Audi’s buttons and switches have a relentlessly engineered, precisely damped action that makes them all a joy to fiddle with.
When you consider the costs involved to achieve this level of detailing and finish, it’s not surprising that you won’t find it in many other cars with purportedly premium origins.
In fact, you could probably fund in entirety, a new-vehicle development programme for another manufacturer for what Audi spends on its cars’ interiors.
This might give credence to the notion that the cars are better to sit in than to drive, and while that would have been true with Audis of old, the company has been making a concerted effort to ensure that its new cars handle well, as evinced by models like the latest A6. Former BMW boss Bernd Pischetsrieder now heads Audi’s parent, the Volkswagen Group, and it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine Pischetsrieder wanting to make VW Group products as well known for their dynamic prowess as those of his former company.
Despite its new corporate face and substantially resculpted exterior, Audi’s latest A4 isn’t an all-new model per se. Some of the old car’s oily bits still lurk under the heavily tweaked and prodded exterior.
That said, Audi has only carried over the best bits, the new A4 gets suspension componentry from the S4 sports sedan.
The exterior tweaks do work well, the chrome ‘single-frame’ grille that dominates the nose and the new head lamps add a welcome dose of much-needed aggression.
The overall effect is that of a scaled-down A6, which is no bad thing.
