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Well it seems crazy that only yesterday it was quite pleasant and sunny outside when we were filming other parts of our clip for the audi or road but in a way the bad weather kind of speaks to our narrative the all-road is an all-weather all-rounder but how has audi’s all-terrain wagon worked for us for the last three months well let’s find out pricing starts
From thousand six hundred dollars before options and on-road costs but our car adds 19-inch wheels metallic paint and a driver assistance pack the wheels and paint are nice but the 2900 assistant suite feels a bit cheeky at this price point especially when you consider it adds technology that you regularly find as standard equipment on cars with less prestigious
Badges however one of the strongest points of the a4 all-road is how it looks now it may be just a grey station wagon but we’ve had people on the street come up and say what a smart looking car and i gotta say it really does look good from the led headlamps the optional 19 inch wheels and even the manhattan gray paint it kind of comes together really really
Well and here’s another fun thing when we take a press car from audi they give us a a whole library of these little postcards in the glove box that have the spec of the car there so you know what all the bits and pieces are and more importantly what they cost but you can give these out to people if they do want a car like this and i will say audi it’s a really
Really clever idea and we like it now it’s freezing cold out here let’s jump in and have a look inside before we go for a drive now before i get in i will say i’m really sorry we actually washed this car yesterday i’ve only just noticed it now it is absolutely filthy so it’s uh pretty sad to see what one day can do especially on grey paint now there’s a common
Misconception out there that by not buying an suv like say a q5 you’re somehow compromising but i’ve got to say the a4 all road as a station wagon there’s plenty of room back here i’m six foot three that seat is in my driving position and as you can see i’ve got a stack of knee room i’ve got good toe room but more importantly got a heap of head room and i’m very
Comfortable plus there’s everything you need there are central air vents and temperature controls a 12 volt outlet map pockets behind the front seats deep bins in the doors and integrated blinds in the windows but one of the things that we will say a lot about this car is just how well it is made and perhaps something that really kind of calls this out are the
Cup holders here in the center armrest now you just listen to that it’s a well engineered plastic movement here it feels solid it feels short and it feels reliable and you do find that in some other european cars you end up with a flimsy piece of plastic you wouldn’t want to rest a coffee cup in this feels well made and that’s why you choose an audi now as
I said there’s no boot kicker on this car which is a bit of a shortcoming at this price point however you do get a very usable 495 liter boot it’s a flat loading floor you’ve got remote levers to fold the seats down to expand the load bay if you need to and it has been a very very usable car i’ve had this as i’ve moved house has kind of worked well perhaps the
Best thing about the boot though is the parcel blind which may seem like a silly thing but it motorizes out of the way when you open the boot and it comes back down again when you close the boot which for me who tends to be a little bit forgetful is actually a really cool feature now that feeling of quality certainly extends up here to the front seats as well
In our three months with this car there has not been one rattle one creek one shake it is a really really well put together car you’ve got some very nice material selections the dashboard here these lovely knurled switches it feels premium it feels well put together and i think in terms of that intrinsic outer quality the all is still well ahead of some others
Now keem continuity watchers may note that i don’t use my glasses for driving yeah that’s fine they’re for reading and i can see perfectly what’s going on up ahead i’m just wondering what those people are doing on the road kidding well first things first the two liter turbo diesel engine now interestingly audi updated this car for 2020 and then for 2021 they
Updated it again and it got a new engine which this one doesn’t have despite us thinking that it did and it turns out that it didn’t it’s all part of the uh delivery cycle of covert and and things but we will get a chance to drive that later so this car still has the 140 kilowatt 2-liter turbo diesel the new a4 all road that looks exactly the same has a 2-liter
Turbo diesel with 150 kilowatts because it has a 12-volt mild hybrid system mainly that gives it a little bit of extra urge but it mainly gives it better economy and we we’re keen to see if it does make any difference because being a relatively small capacity diesel we would have expected a bit better fuel economy than uh mid seven liters per hundred and even
On the open road we did a long tour in this car where it was sitting around high sixes so not crazy and i guess it comes down to it i remember it wasn’t that long ago we had cars that were doing 15 16 20 liters per 100 and we thought that that was okay so okay cool we’re in the sevens but i really would have expected this car to have sat in the sixes and maybe
In the fives on a longer tour but fuel use aside the 2 litre diesel in this car it’s a really really nice engine you’ve got plenty of punch when it builds that response above 2000 rpm even higher if you do need the car to feel a bit more urgent it’s a really nice and responsive engine and it’s actually been one of the highlights of this car if you need it there is
A fair amount of performance and it makes the all road a really enjoyable car to drive so then the next part of things is comfort and again the all-road does a terrific job around town so dealing with speed humps and cobblestones and railway crossings and the like very easy very compliant it’s a nice car to drive on a longer tour however it’s even more relaxing
You’ve got driver assistance technology which i’ll touch on in a minute because it is optional and that’s very cheeky audi but in terms of just general ride comfort and ride behavior i think the station wagon format of the all road makes it a much better behaved car than you find from an suv even an audi suv and for that reason i would always pick the all-road
Over even a competing q5 just because it’s a little bit more i guess tight and enjoyable to drive something else we’ve noticed is how long it takes to wake from sleep so that is from a start stop at the set of traffic lights and it’s just not as wheeling off the mark as you’d really want it to and it can be from that trying to be more efficient as it tends to
Be to drive along where it will switch off the diesel but it’s just waking up from that sometimes it’s just not as urgent as you’d like and we say it time and time again with the volkswagen group products so whether it’s a v-dub or a skoda or an audi that latency between uh asleep to save fuel and an action of driving can be quite pronounced the transmission on
The move again is great you’ve got paddle shifters here on the wheel if you need them it’s fast it’s kind of completely imperceptible to see when it when it changes gears so on the go it’s great when you’re stopped and changing so for a parallel park again you get that latency between drive and reverse and the shifter itself is a little bit fiddly to use you
Kind of have to dislocate your elbow in the riggs maneuver to get access to it and it’s i don’t know it just could be a little bit better and you find particularly standard thing to check a reverse parallel park up a hill there is that rollback latency that you’ll get so do try and take it for a test drive before you commit to a purchase so then on to the big
Thing value now we touched on it earlier in the clip and the fact that the driver assistance tech on this car which is a 70 000 car to begin with is optional it’s that’s not on quite frankly these days everything like that particularly on a premium product like an audi should be rolled in but this car with its options you’ve got the paint and the wheels we’ve got
No sunroof we’ve got no kicker on the boot we’ve got no heated seats and this is a 75 000 car and that’s a bit too much and i think that is really where we find the weak point of the all-road is you’re getting a really nice car it’s a lovely car to drive it’s a very well made car but it just doesn’t stack up in the value stakes against other volkswagen group
Products and you know i would be very very hard pressed to tell you to not buy this car and go and look at a volkswagen passat all track because it’s basically the same sure you don’t get the niceties of the audi badge and you do sort of step down a little bit in terms of materials but it’s a very very nice car and it’s a much better value proposition now in
Terms of technology and i guess luxury appointments in this car there are some really really nice touches the light up cup holders i love that you’ve got interior mood lighting on the rear doors to make it easy to see where your switches are and where the handles are really really handy especially for having kids in the back the touch screen up here again the
Audi system is is quite advanced the google maps overlay on the navigation it works really well when you’re touring in the countryside perhaps it gets a little busy when you’re around town but i still like it uh as a as a feature it does look impressive i have to say one of the most impressive parts of it is the apple carplay full screen overlay it’s it takes
Up the whole screen it scales appropriately it feels rich it looks really really nice on there and so from from that side of things you do get that premium feel however for this update of the a4 audi have taken away the controller that you had down here and it’s basically only the touchscreen that you have as an interaction point and so if you’re driving around
It’s a little bit bumpy or you’re moving around you’re sort of like you know trying to figure out where where to touch on the screen and i find in order to use it i have to hold the screen with my hand and brace myself and then just use my thumb and it’s not just me some of the other team around the the car advice drive office have seen the same thing and you
Find it’s just not that easy to use versus the jog wheel or even a touch pad here on the console that was a lot easier to get while you were driving and i think it’s perhaps a step backward for audi in terms of that rolling usability in just making this a touch screen so it’s a nice screen and it’s a a good menu could be a little bit better designed i will say
Especially when you see what mercedes is up to but it’s the interaction points i feel probably not as good as they could have been one of the things we haven’t really liked about the all-road is the way that it tends to i guess scrub or push when it’s on full lock now that is part of it being a four-wheel drive so the your wheel drive system the wheels are
Moving at different rates as we’re turning around but it’s really really noticeable in this car and where i am i’m going to do a u-turn and see if you can hear it so if we go full lock like that can you feel and hear that the vibration coming through sometimes it’s worse than others but it’s very very noticeable particularly uh when you’re turning tightly and
In a shopping center or a car park environment you hear it all the time it’s not degrading the way that you drive the car and it certainly is not putting you in any harm’s way but it’s just i don’t know it’s just something that you wouldn’t really expect from a car at this level but fundamentally and i know we made a bit of fun of the all-road and all-weather
Bit at the start of the clip the road really is a great all-rounder i will say it’s a cool car like it looks cool it’s a cool family car it’s a cool dad car if you’re a cool dad like me like it’s a it’s a good solid all-rounder in in so many ways it ticks the boxes as a practical luxurious and really effortless tourer they just need to fix that value proposition
Well we’ll sum this up nice and quickly before the next lot of rain comes through the audi a4 all road is a great all-rounder it’s really well built it’s lovely to drive and that diesel engine gives plenty of punch where the car really does fall down though is in the value proposition the fact that you can get something else from the volkswagen audi group that
Is the same size and does the same thing as the all-road for much less with more equipment is probably the smarter decision and it’s the one that we would likely take but if you’ve got a different opinion or would simply like to know more hit us up in the comments below always hit subscribe to stay up to date with all of our latest videos and hit the bell icon
As well just to make sure you receive a notification every time a new video is published if you would like to read up more about the audi a4 all road and what it’s been like as a long-termer for us then you can read the review in detail over at drive.com you
Transcribed from video
2021 Audi A4 allroad 40TDI review | Long-term farewell | Drive.com.au By Drive.com.au
