Guest trying their luck at the tables during the A4 launch, ‘winnings’ were used to bid for prizes

By Nick Syn

AUDI LAUNCHED ITS heavily updated A4 at a gala dinner held at the Shangri-La earlier this month. In keeping with the industry’s new penchant for increasingly inventive launches and the evening’s theme of ‘pushing the limits’, guests were given chips and invited to try their luck on the gambling tables at the specially constructed Audi A4 Casino.

Punters then used their ‘winnings’ to bid for attractive prizes at the end-of-evening auction, including a $10,000 discount on the purchase price of a new Audi and a holiday to Bali. While the car has been available in right hand drive form in other markets for almost six months, local Audi fans have had to wait until now for the A4’s introduction here, considerably late on the heels of the BMW 3 Series’ debut. The A4 has traditionally made up roughly 60 percent of local sales, so the delay of such an important model has puzzled many.

However, according to a spokesperson from Premium Automobiles, Audi’s local distributor, a June launch was always on the cards. “We were hoping to bring the car here in March at the earliest but we wanted to make sure that the specifications were right for the local market,” she said, adding that “juggling allocation for our relatively smaller market and negotiating prices,” also took time to properly sort out.

Another element Premium had to take into consideration was the fact that the last generation A4 was still selling strongly, thanks in part to a spate of attractive promotions that the company continued to run up until a month before the launch of the new car.

To date, about 10 orders for the new A4 have been taken and Premium hopes that the car will help Audi further increase its market share here by a projected five percent, improving on the old A4’s success. In all, the company plans to sell 250 units for the rest of this year, which would already account for about 55 percent of Premium’s projected total sales volume.

The car will be available in 2.0-litre, 1.8-litre turbo, and 2.0-litre turbo FSI guises, with the first two engines carried over from the previous model. The 2.0-litre turbo FSI unit is the same engine that powers Volkswagen’s acclaimed Golf GTI. The new A4 also boasts major revisions to the suspension and chassis design, incorporating components and technology from the last generation S4 as well as the latest A6 models. Prices range from $143,000 to $185,000 with COE.