Audi A3 sportback

Given that the Audi A3 Sportback has five doors to the ‘standard’ A3’s three and its length has been extended by 33mm to improve room in both the rear seats and the boot, it is tempting to think of it as a long-wheelbase A3 and therefore the exception to the norm. It is nothing of the sort.

For a start and in purely technical terms, the Sportback is not just longer but fractionally higher and wider too. Moreover, in the showroom Audiexpects it to outsell its littler sister two to one, so while the three-door launched first, if anything is to be regarded as the niche product, it certainly shouldn’t be the Sportback.

Most compelling of all, however, is that while the Sportback may indeed be larger than a three-door Audi A3, that does not make it a large car, even by class standards. A BMW 1-series is longer both overall and in wheelbase, while the Mercedes A-class is taller and also puts more air between its wheels.

What we have, therefore, is the most mainstream of mainstream Audis, the car designed to tempt young families into the fold of the four rings and provide enough talent and envious stares from the neighbours to make them never want to leave.

Audi charges a reasonable £620 premium for those wanting a Sportback over a three-door and currently denies customers the 1.2-litre petrol engine that kicks off the three-door range.

The range, therefore, could hardly be simpler with a 1.4 or 1.8-litre choice of petrol engines and a 1.6 and 2.0-litre selection of diesels. All are turbocharged.

There are three core equipment grades – SE, Sport and S-line – and a price structure ranging from £19,825 for a 1.4 SE petrol to £26,980 for a 2.0 TDI S-line with £1480 worth of optional dual-clutch automatic transmission.

So does the extra space make the more-door Sportback more appealing than the sleek three-door Audi A 3? Read on to find out.

DESIGN

Already we've seen the fruits of Volkswagen MQB platform that underpins the A3 and, soon, every car in the group of Golf size or above with a transverse engine mounted in its nose. The key to the structure is not just its lightweight (the Sportback is over 100kg lighter than even its BMW equivalent) but its extreme versatility.

Extending the wheelbase of a mass-produced car whose platform was not designed to be pushed and pulled in every direction would be a prohibitively expensive business: for Audi it’s sufficiently cheap to make business sense just to provide a little extra differentiation between three and five door versions of the same car.

Like all other MQB-based cars, the A3 has strut-type front suspension, but all versions carry the more sophisticated multi-link rear end denied those who buy the cheapest VW Golfs.

All the engines are either new to the A3 or substantially renewed but the lion’s share of sales will be split between the 148bhp 2-litre diesel and 120bhp 1.4-litre petrol motor. Which to choose is not as simple as figuring out whether you are a diesel or petrol kind of guy or girl.

For a start Audi charges a premium of £2300 for the diesel engine, steep by any standard, which in cold financial terms would take even a very high mileage driver a couple of years to recoup – to most people it will likely be longer than they hold the car, although much will be recouped in superior residual value.

But you have still to factor insurance five groups higher for the diesel as well as the 85 kg weight penalty for diesel that undoubtedly affects the car’s handling.

INTERIOR

Can ‘timeless’ also mean ‘dull’? It can when describing the interior of the Sportback. All the usual things that instantly annoy about poorly planned interiors – those tacked-on pieces of ill-advised trim, the irritatingly alternative typeface on the dials, the occasional invisible button, the slightly displaced driving position and the odd blind spot in your vision around the car – are all absent.

Instead, you’re presented with an interior with a design cleanliness to bring a tear of nostalgia to the eye of a retired heart surgeon. There’s nothing superfluous here, no eye-catching gimmicks to divert your attention from some more fundamental failing. In simple ergonomic terms, this cabin is close to perfect.

You can see how Audi has distilled once-separate elements of design into single concentrates. The fuel gauge and water temperature gauges now form part of the arc of the revcounter and speedometer respectively. The MMI control system for navigation (if fitted), media, radio and information systems has boiled down to one rotary knob and two switches. All the ventilation controls are laid out in a single line. In terms of pure ergonomic efficiency, it’s something of a landmark.

But in terms of providing occupants with surprise and delight features to brighten up your journey, it would score a big, fat zero were it not saved by the way the colour display screen disappears into the dash when not in use. That aside, this interior is as straight-laced as the UN Security Council Christmas party.

Never do you feel this more than when sitting in the back. You might think there would be space to spare here, but you’d be wrong; headroom is limited and kneeroom merely adequate, despite that extra 35mm of metal between the wheels.

The seat is comfortable, but the view out is unrelieved and grey. As for the boot, it’s well shaped and easily accessed, and while it offers a pretty paltry extra 15 litres of space over the three-door A3 with the seats up, fully folded there’s an extremely useful additional 120 litres of room for your clobber.

PERFORMANCE

It’s hard not to conclude that the 2.0 TDI is the engine with it all: extremely strong performance coupled with exceptional fuel consumption and correspondingly low CO2. Compared with the 1.6 diesel, it’s over 20 per cent quicker to 62 mph but not even 10 per cent less economical.

What the figures won’t describe is the mid-range torque of the big diesel, or how quiet it is at cruising speeds. The size of its all-round performance envelope makes it quite clearly the engine to have – provided, of course, you can afford the substantial premium charged for it.

The good news for those who can’t or won’t is that the 1.4-litre petrol motor in the cheapest Sportback is no kind of poor relation at all. Its 120bhp may sound a rather mean amount of power for such a car, but the figure reveals nothing about how that power is delivered.

First, the engine is startlingly smooth and quiet, enough to make the diesel feel quite unrefined under strong acceleration. It is also exceptionally flexible, providing maximum torque at just 1400rpm, lower than either diesel variant, and capable of maintaining it all the way to 4000rpm. This means it can maintain peak torque over a band 2600rpm wide; true, the 2.0 TDI engine has far more torque, but it can maintain it for less than half the range.

The bottom line is that, whichever of the two core engines you choose, you are unlikely to regret it, as long as it is appropriate to your circumstances. Likewise the transmissions; both the six-speed manual and seven-speed dual-clutch automatic gearboxes are excellent and provide broadly similar performance and economy in most variants.

However, we’d be inclined to save £1480 and go for the smooth-shifting three-pedal option.