30 Aug 01
Say you're going to spend upwards of twenty-grand on a motor car. You and your family's main motor car. Presumably, you'd think, you'd want to make sure you're buying the right car for your needs.
Well, apparently not, because more than sixty percent of Audi A4 Avant owners cite 'design' as the main reason they made the purchase. Stuff usability, forget quality, to hell with practicality - most A4 Avant drivers bought their cars merely because they liked the look of it.
Good news for Audi's designers, bad news for Mercedes (C-class), BMW (3 Series) and Rover (75) - last year the A4 Avant outsold its nearest rival (the 3 Series) by more than two-to-one.
Makes you wonder, then, whether Audi bothered making this 2001 A4 Avant any good at all. More bad news for the competitors - it did.
Sidling into an A4 Avant is pleasing. The interior quality seems excellent. Perhaps it's not quite as well integrated or as solid as a BMW 3 Series, and it's not as charming as a Rover 75. But it feels as good as the Mercedes C-class and, in my reckoning, is more cohesively designed. Forget the fake wood inserts though, eh? And stick to fake metal instead which suit the car better, in a functional, clinical, dynamic sort of way.
And the Avant has a big boot. Ah, the boot. Because you've only bought an A4 for the looks, you probably won't care, but it has a flat load-sill, a wide opening (an unprecedented one-metre wide), and flat sides in the loadbay. It also has a removable floor carpet, which folds in a variety of ways to allow packing of dirty things onto the plastic floor beneath. Then, naturally, there are the folding storage hooks (6 of 'em), a netted compartment, an elastic restraining strap, a net which covers the floor or becomes a storage bag, a power socket and a storage cubby. Useful. On the rare occasions when you'll care.
