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The brilliant plus
Although we are blessed with a multitude of cars – some may even argue abundance – there are some models which we don’t get. Next to any left-hand-drive-only examples, quite a few sub-species don’t always make it to our shores. One such car was the Volkswagen Golf Plus.
Today I bring you further evidence that Audi has gone a bit mental. Not content with building quality motor cars, their engineers have produced fine fast cars over the years. After building such monsters as R8, RS7, S8, RS4 and S3, they recently cornered the tiny A1, looked at each other and nodded quietly.
So you live out in the sticks but the roads never deteriorate enough to warrant a wonky 4×4. Perhaps you already have such a vehicle and long for a decent station wagon. Maybe the one you fancy is a butch estate which can also deal with a nasty middelmannetjie. This car could be Audi’s new A4 Allroad.
Good news. If you’re in the market for a premium hatchback, your extremely tasty choices have just been supplemented with a rejuvenated version of an old favourite – the Audi A3 Sportback. Ingolstadt’s regular 3-door A3 arrived late last year, the Sportback 5-door version took a little longer to gestate.
I’m not a huge fan of oversized, pricey SUVs. I find them a bit pointless really. And initially, I wasn’t particularly taken with the Audi Q5 either. My first impressions were very negative, I disliked its bulbous bonnet, I felt too far removed from the whole driving experience with its clever driver assist technology and I really couldn’t see the point of its existence – halfway between a Q3 (which is quite big enough for the school run in my opinion) and a Q7 (which is somehow just magnificent).
Big SUV’s attract quite a bit of criticism for their size and price, usually flavoured with a faint undercurrent of jealousy. No other car represents wasteful extravagance better than a giant and powerful 4×4, especially if the rolling palace only has one occupant.
Recent events have encouraged me to take a fresh look at soft-roaders and their capabilities which are often misunderstood, sometimes even by yours truly. The brand-new Audi Q3 I just tested will hopefully help us to dismiss some of the following myths:
