Audi A6 Allroad on long-term test: is this really all the car you'll ever need?

All models come with a mild hybrid system which employs a lithium-ion battery pack to eke out a few more miles per gallon. Our car has been specified with £5,930-worth of options which include the £1,495 technology pack, electrically adjustable heated and folding mirrors are a hefty £1,525, along with four-zone air-conditioning for £825. 

Another option is the £685 Floret Silver paintwork which although not the most exciting colour in the world is smart and suits the design well, particularly with the chrome accents around the window and the chrome roof bars.

I’m not so convinced by the body cladding around the wheel arches, however. It suits the rough tough image Audi wants for the car but doesn’t look like it’ll stand up to much abuse. 

And that is sort of the point of the A6 Allroad. It’s a luxury estate car (and believe me, the interior really is luxurious) that has some SUV capability. For me, that talent must include extra ride height. Although not underwater yet, the lanes around my house have been known to flood, usually around the Christmas/New Year period.

We’ll have to see whether the Allroad’s air suspension that raises it 60mm from its lowest position is enough. 

Looks and appeal

Of course the Audi badge has an appeal all of its own. On top of that, the A6 Allroad is a handsome beast. At 4.9m long and just 1.49m high in its lowest position it has a sporty stance, too. This is heightened by the suspension which when dropped the 15mm from standard gives the Allroad a positively racy look. 

The more three-dimensional appearance of the grille is a definite improvement over the previous A6. And the LED daytime running lights frame it nicely. I’m not convinced the dark plastic wheel arch surrounds are entirely necessary but they ensure you can instantly tell this is an Allroad rather than a regular A6 Avant.

Audi is frequently lauded for the beauty of its cabins and this car is no different. The attention to detail is stunning. Our model features the black glass-look control buttons (a £325 option) which means the sizeable infotainment screen is seamlessly integrated into the dashboard. The downside is that when the car is turned off, the finger marks on the touchscreen will irritate anyone who’s even been lightly brushed with the OCD stick.

But for me (and I suspect many others) the real appeal of the A6 Allroad comes from the fact that this is a brilliant all-rounder. With Quattro four-wheel drive and the ability to raise and lower the ground clearance, it has many of the skills of an SUV.

The interior is spacious with room for four in luxury, five in comfort, and a healthy 565-litre boot before you’ve folded the seats down. And all this is clad in the Savile Row suit of a sleek and sporty estate car.

On the motorway the Audi is a fast and efficient mile-muncher. On country roads, the ability to raise the ride height doesn’t quite enable you to see over hedges but it certainly helps navigate rutted off-road tracks. 

So this car is an attractive prospect in many ways. The standard specification doesn’t add to that, however. Being charitable, it’s stingy. Our car’s standard price is £54,555. But let’s be realistic: no one in their right mind is going to buy a car like this without something as fundamental as folding and heated door mirrors.

Equally, you’d expect the highest level of connectivity and a wireless mobile phone charging plate as standard in such a premium car. These two features cost an extra £3,020. 

It’s clearly a strategy that works for Audi. But I can’t imagine it’s one that warms buyers to the brand.

The drive

You only have to look at the figures to realise that the A6 Allroad’s 3.0-litre V6 turbodiesel is more than up to the job. Although this is the entry-level model, its 369lb ft of torque allied to the quattro four-wheel drive is enough to ensure that acceleration feels very brisk indeed.

Put your foot down and the aural response from the engine is pleasing too. The engine’s smooth exhaust note sounds as powerful as it feels. I wouldn’t call it sporty but it’s very satisfying.

Getting things moving isn’t quite so agreeable. As with other modern motors, the A6 Allroad features a ‘fly by wire’ throttle, where the traditional cable between accelerator pedal and engine has been replaced. The result is when you’re at a standstill you press the throttle and then wait a beat, perhaps a second and a half, before anything happens. It’s annoying and takes some getting used to.

It might take some of the sheen off driving the Allroad but this remains a mightily impressive car. The eight-speed torque converter gearbox shifts smoothly enough to make any thoughts of the VW Group’s Direct Shift Gearbox redundant. This, after all, is no sportscar. It doesn’t need whip crack DSG gearchanges. And this gearbox makes you realise that a decent traditional auto with modern software is still more than up to the job.

On the road, the ride is beautifully cosseting. Part of the reason for this might be that I’ve switched the Allroad to winter tyres. I haven’t really noticed any increase in noise. But in doing the swap, it’s gone down a wheel size, from 19-inch to 18s, which may have benefited the ride.

The air suspension that jacks the car’s ride height up features modes including Comfort and Auto, both of which are incredibly adept at isolating the cabin from the lumps and bumps of Britain’s roads. Sport mode takes the soft edge off things which somehow jars with what this car is about.

The electromechanical steering isn’t brilliantly endowed with feel but again, this is no sports car; it’s a long-distance cruiser with some off-road capability. It doesn’t need razor-sharp responses.

The quattro system means permanent all-wheel drive with a self-locking centre differential when required. This can divert up to 60 per cent of the power to the front tyres, up to 80 per cent of the power rearwards if required. I haven’t had cause to use it yet but I’m sure when the time comes it’ll work just fine.

In the meantime, the Allroad feels perfectly at home cruising along the motorway. There’s minimal road and wind noise, when it’s in eighth gear the engine ticks over noiselessly, and the cabin is a feel-good place to spend time. It even seems quite economical. So far, the computer is telling me I’m averaging about 43mpg. And that’s just fine by me.

The interior

Audi has long won praise for the high quality of its interiors and slipping into our A6 Allroad is confirmation that the company continues to raise the bar. Perhaps the most noticeable thing is the glass-look control buttons on the dashboard. These are a £325 extra and make the dash appear glass-like with the centre console blending seamlessly into the panel in front of the passenger.

At the top there’s a 10.1” touchscreen; below is an 8.6” touchscreen featuring virtual buttons. It means no unsightly knobs or switches for functions such as temperature and ventilation fans. And as the ‘buttons’ have haptic feedback, you know when you’ve activated them. This is all part of the £1,495 Technology Pack which includes the navigation with Google Earth.

One thing I definitely wouldn’t pay for is the centrally mounted tablet you ‘write’ on when you want to enter something into the navigation. As a left-hander, it’s easy for me to use. But it doesn’t always recognise your handwriting. And it’s yet another item to take your attention away from the road. So the excellent voice control it is. And with ‘natural voice recognition’ it means you don’t have to speak as if to a slightly hard-of-hearing aunt.

The Black Twin leather seats are super comfortable and supportive both front and back. And the four-zone air con means everyone can control their own temperature. I can, however, think of better ways to spend £825. Is the acoustic glazing for the side windows worth the extra £525? I couldn’t answer that without riding in an equivalent model (with the same tyres) that didn’t have it.

However, I’m sure it contributes to the hushed and luxurious ambience that the interior exudes. Ahead of the driver is a third screen. Again, this is completely digital so you can alter it to suit your requirements. If you want bigger instruments for speed and revs, no problem. Or if you want it taken up almost entirely by navigation, again it’s a push of a steering wheel button away.

The interior is more spacious than the car it replaces and there’s certainly room to stretch out, even if does feel slightly gloomy; our car is all black with a bit more black thrown in for good measure. Going further back and the boot is a positively cavernous 565 litres. The luggage cover is linked to the tailgate so when that lifts, so does the luggage cover. And there are hooks aplenty to tie things down with.

So the quality of the A6 Allroad’s interior makes this a relaxed and enjoyable machine to spend time in. But how practical is it?

Practicality

Buyers of estates, SUVs, or even hybrids of the two such as the A6 Allroad, will doubtless have practicality high on their wish list. The Audi won’t disappoint. For starters, the boot is a cavernous 565 litres. In real terms that means it comfortably swallowed the three-person Foxall family and all the addendum a skiing trip requires with room to spare.

As anyone who goes skiing knows, it’s a luggage-intensive holiday. It’s even more so because the alpine village of Vaujany where we were going requires you to carry snow chains. As we were self-catering and keen to avoid the shocking exchange rate where possible, we’d packed plenty of supplies. The Allroad might as well have looked at this lot, sighed and said: “Is that all?”

We crossed the channel from Calais with the supremely efficient and no fuss DFDS. We chose to upgrade to the premium lounge for some peace and quiet during the journey. But we hardly needed it as the Allroad dispatched the 650-mile, nine-hour journey from the Alps to Calais with effortless ease.

On the boat, to disable the alarm’s tilt sensor you simply press the lock button on the key fob twice. And when we left the ship, there was no messing about with beam benders on the headlights. They adjusted automatically from driving on the right to driving on the left again.

For added reassurance, all our luggage stowed neatly beneath the nifty sliding luggage compartment cover, it was simple to pack too. This is because the boot has nicely squared-off sides and thanks to the air suspension, the low lip is a mere 63cm from the ground.

Should you need to fold down the back seats, you’ll find they won’t go perfectly flat. But when they are folded, they liberate an almost two-metre long space. It would be enough room for a six-footer to sleep in. And because the boot is deep, I have managed to get a chest of drawers in beneath the luggage cover.

At first glance, there’s plenty of storage around the cabin. But the front door bins will only just accommodate a reusable water bottle. And the mobile phone charging plate is in the centre console making that redundant for storing anything else. However, the glovebox is large and the USB charging ports in the rear have gone down well with our teenage daughter.

I, on the other hand, have been more concerned with more prosaic matters, such as getting to our destination. The A6 Allroad is a quattro, meaning it’s four-wheel drive. Along with Bridgestone winter tyres I was confident it would prove unstoppable if the weather did its worst.

Although there was snow beside the road, it wasn’t coating the carriageway. But there was plenty of black ice on the climb up to the village we were staying in. Yet with its winter boots on, the Allroad felt reassuringly surefooted throughout.

Gripes! It’s a bit slow to react

I’ve found this Audi a relatively ‘niggle-free’ car to live with. My biggest gripe is with its leisurely response to the accelerator pedal. When sitting at a junction, you press the accelerator to proceed and the car has to have a good think about it for at least a second before doing anything. You get used to it over time but some software somewhere needs a good tweak.

At the other end of the scale, the key is super-sensitive. On a number of occasions, I’ve managed to trigger the electric tailgate simply while removing the key from my pocket. On one of those, I was driving off at a fuel station when the boot began opening. It reminded me of the days of making calls from your pocket with a mobile phone.

Speaking of phones, this obviously has Bluetooth but the phone integration with the car is far from seamless. Although it’ll show podcasts, the list on the car appears to be all the podcasts I’ve ever had on my phone. And that makes it virtually impossible to select one I want to listen to from the touchscreen. It means you either ask an obliging passenger to select your listening, do it before you set off from the phone, or pull off the road. In this day and age, it’s not good enough.

I would imagine Apple CarPlay would make this a much better experience but that’s an extra. And I have been rather disappointed with the rather parsimonious standard level of equipment the A6 Allroad is specified with – or rather without.

In standard form, this is a £54,555 car, yet you have to pay extra for automatic cruise control. And while it has keyless start, it doesn’t appear to have keyless locking/unlocking (at least I can’t find how to engage it if it does). Of course these are first world problems, but this is a luxury car and we’re now in a world where large Seats and Skodas, to name just a couple of cars from the same VW Group stable as the A6, put it to shame in equipment terms.

Verdict

I’ve often thought that people who choose SUVs rather than the traditional estate car might be missing a trick or two. Afterall, estate cars are frequently less expensive to own yet just as versatile in everyday carrying terms as their high-riding rivals. They’re certainly better to drive and for people who want to stand out from the crowd, they make SUV drivers look run of the mill.

The A6 Allroad is in many ways the perfect solution. It’s a handsome looking car, more akin to the regular A6 than previous Allroad models. And when its suspension is in regular (rather than raised) mode, it looks low, sleek and really rather slinky.

But this is an estate car shape with SUV attributes. That certainly reassured me when I took it to the Alps skiing over the New Year. With winter tyres fitted and the Quattro four-wheel drive system plus air suspension that hikes the ground clearance if required, I was certain it would prove unstoppable in all but the most ridiculous weather. And although there wasn’t any snow on the roads, it was nice to know the ability was there if required.

Despite the breadth of its driving talents, there’s certainly nothing utilitarian about the interior. Simply put, it’s that of a luxury saloon. On the drive down to the Alps, it coped effortlessly with the mainly motorway cruising. It was easy to spend hours behind the wheel of, the 63-litre fuel tank was good for 600 miles of motoring giving us a choice on where to fill up, and the 3.0-litre diesel didn’t even break a sweat cruising at the 80mph French limit.

Inside, it’s as beautifully built as any Audi and it’s very easy to bask in its premium ambience. The glass-look dash and two massive screens make it feel even more expensive than it already appears. Yet it still ticks plenty of practicality boxes. The cockpit easily has room for five people, it showed no blemishes at all after my three months with it, and the boot was beyond big enough for my humble requirements.

Over its time with us, the Audi recorded 39.8mpg which is better than the claimed 37.7mpg for Sport mode. And although that’s not overly impressive in this day and age, it’s marginally better than the smaller-engined Seat Tarraco we ran before (38.2mpg), and not bad for a car with such effortless performance.

So, the acid question: would I spend my own money on one of these (if I had the cash, of course)? It would definitely make the shortlist for its all-round breadth of capability. But I think in the end it would come down to whether I could find a model that had more kit on it for a price I deemed reasonable and could still afford.

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