The new Audi A6 won the “World Car of the Year” award in 2005. It was the first ever winner of the new award which only considers cars sold in at least five countries on at least two continents before January 1 of the year of the award. Runners-up to the A6 were the Volvo S40 and Porsche 911.
If you want to cruise from meeting to meeting plucking ‘low-hanging-fruit’, ‘actioning best-practice’ and ‘benchmarking effectiveness’ in comfort and with enough vigour to put a big smile on your face, the Audi A6 is a solid buy.
The Audi A6 is a good-looking, accomplished large executive car. The A6 provides a balance between ride comfort and precise, responsive handling and impressive amounts of power are delivered with excellent fuel efficiency. Available as a saloon or estate ('Avant') version, the current A6 is a safe car, with. a structure that is 34 per cent stiffer than the previous model to create the best possible crash protection, resulting in a full five stars in the Euro NCAP crash tests for occupant safety.
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Audi A6 makes a great case for itself – its understated corporate good looks have been freshened up with a hint of menace; the quattro four-wheel-drive system is outstanding and provides resolute, sure-footed grip; the build quality is sound; it has excellent practicality and is sure to hold its value well. Plus, the performance from the 3-litre supercharged engine is superb.
Lugging around 1.7-tonnes of corporate heft requires some serious firepower – and our test car’s 3-litre supercharged V6 engine was more than up to the task.
This engine replaces two outgoing Audi engines: the 3.2-litre V6 and 4.2-litre V8 petrol units. The new 3-litre V6 engine has been supercharged, and now offers up nearly as much torque as the old 4.2-litre V8, with 310lb/ft of pulling power (against 324lb/ft for the V8). Up front the driver and passenger get plenty of headroom and impressive adjustability, while three adults will slot into the rear seats with ease.
The boot is cavernous and holds 546 litres, more than you get in the BMW 5 Series, and there is plenty of space for extraneous stuff inside, thanks to its deep side pockets and arm rest cubby. The three generations of the Audi A6 have come in a wide range of engine options, from 1.8 litre upwards for petrol engines, and 1.9 TDI and 2.5 TDI diesels.
The current range includes petrol engines of 2.0, 2.4, 2.8, 3.1 and 4.2 litres and diesel versions of 2.0, 2.7 and 3.0 litres in both the saloon and Avant models. The “S-Line” versions of the A6 saloon feature lowered suspension, 18-inch five-arm alloy wheels, up-rated brakes and various changes to the interior.
Audi calls its new A6 the "Silent Executive," referring to the advances in noise-proofing and refinement made to the new-generation models, not to the nature of its likely drivers. A new version of Audi’s Multi Media Interface (MMI) has updated navigation and Audi claims it has made it more intuitive to use. It’s now available with a 40GB hard drive able to store MP3s.
