Road test: Audi A6 Allroad Quattro

The Audi Allroad is not as butch as it looks, says Neil Lyndon, but it's a fine car for all that

it may not be easy to understand why anybody would deliberately and knowingly choose to buy a large, luxury 4x4, but it is equally difficult to see why anybody would not want to own an Audi A6 Allroad Quattro. If Ken Livingstone is going to outlaw the Chelsea Tractor, perhaps he should make the Allroad compulsory.



The Allroad is Audi's beefcake version of the graceful A6 Avant estate car. To help it convey the message that this car is ready for a touch of the rough stuff, its wheel arches are flared and can be painted in colours that contrast with the rest of the body, its sills are extended and protected by stainless steel panels and a chunky plate is stuck under its tail just in case you should drive over anything bumpy, like a sleeping rhino.

If you really want to look as if you mean business in the bogs, you can spend some more money and fit it with purpose-made all-terrain tyres and a reinforced plate under the engine.

All these trimmings are, of course, approximately as indispensable to normal daily life as a riding hat might be for a walk around Sloane Square; and there is little doubt that, if you tried to drive it on surfaces only slightly more marshy than the gallops on Rotten Row, the Allroad would descend into a state of tractionless paralysis.

However, the Allroad, with its permanent four-wheel drive, is handy enough on a green lane to match a gargantuan 4x4 such as Audi's own Q7, with which it shares much the same four-wheel drive technology.

Its adaptive air suspension system, controlled by a knob at the driver's left hand, will lower the car's body to skim the surface of a motorway or raise it as high as 185mm for negotiating lightly rutted tracks. The electronic stability programme can be primed to intervene over rough surfaces and to adapt the supply of power to the four wheels according to need.

This set-up certainly provides enough off-road capability to conduct you safely from your suburban drive to the station carpark and would probably be sufficient, also, to drive from London to Ulan Bator without a hitch.

The Land Rovers of the 1955-6 Cambridge Overland Exploration to Singapore may have had more gear ratios, but they would not have benefited from a fraction of the Allroad's pulling power or the 177 bhp from the V6 2.7 TDI diesel engine in the version I borrowed.

Those earnestly bearded Cambridge boys would also have thought that the Allroad's top speed of almost 135 mph and 0-60 mph in about nine seconds belonged in the realm of the fastest two-seaters rather than a family car that can double as the tractor for a horse-box.

As for the Allroad's interior, its sumptuousness is not far short of a Bentley's. Audi has long set the benchmark for interior design and finish for BMW and Mercedes to aspire to equal. Neither of those companies does a better job of providing an information management system than Audi's multi-media interface. Nor can they better the A6/Allroad's load-bay capacity of 1,600 litres.

No big estate car is better to drive than a Quattro A6 Avant. Its ride, road-holding, steering and braking share a Swiss bank's depth of reassurance. We drove ours 1,000 miles in two days over New Year and were as comfortable as we might have been sitting in chairs at home.

The price of the Allroad is supposed to start at about £32,500 but, with all its extras, the car I borrowed would cost more than £43,000.

If you need a four-wheel drive estate, however, you could save a lot of money and buy the standard Quattro version of the A6 Avant. Displaying no outward hint of its capabilities, that car could not possibly annoy Ken Livingstone (although some might consider that a disadvantage).

Audi Allroad 2·7 TDI Quattro Tiptronic

Price (as tested) £43,210
Bhp 177
0-62 mph 9·3 seconds
Top speed 133 mph
Average fuel consumption 32· 4mpg
Insurance group 15E

[Source: Telegraph]

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