Yahoo Autos Audi A4
If you require a long introduction to the Audi A4, you may want to read our last review before continuing on. Something about golf, perhaps – if you’re partial to 18 holes, you’ll probably be familiar with Audi’s best-selling product.
The A4 saloon, the estate-shaped Audi A4 Avant and the rebadged Audi A5 coupé are virtually omnipresent in the car parks of the nation’s clubhouses.
The model, specifically the saloon, has not only been the firm’s mainstay for more than four decades but is also one of the primary reasons why Audi has managed to force its way into a buyer reckoning that previously included only BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
Its family name has changed since then. It was originally the Audi 80, a car that moved through four generations (each of them a showcase for the innovations that would later become common traits of the four rings) before it was superseded by the A4 in the mid-1990s. The brand didn’t need all of the second two decades to shift five million examples.
Its huge success and instant familiarity have meant that Audi doesn’t strain itself in straying far from the script.
As you’ll have probably noticed, the new, fifth-generation model pictured is a dead ringer for its predecessor, and the claims made for it – an increase in size, dynamism, efficiency, luxuriousness and technology – were all trumpeted the previous time around, too. The new Audi A4 saloon was swiftly followed by the Audi A4 Avant, Audi A4 Allroad and Audi S4 models, with murmurings growing that a 500bhp RS4 will join the others in the near future.
However, that does not make them insignificant. Much like Volkwagen’s approach to the Volkswagen Golf (software code notwithstanding), Audi tends to be incredibly diligent with its endless strategy of improvement – and, as we are about to find out, there is a tremendous amount going on beneath the skin, not least the kind of weight loss that might just make good the engineers’ long-standing promise to make the A4 more compelling to drive.
Either way, the car will sell big.
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