Audi A6 Avant long-term test

The car Audi A6 Avant Sport 45 TFSI quattro Run by Chris Haining, sub-editor

Why it’s here To find out whether an executive estate car can still cut it in a world that prefers SUVs, and to see if there's still a place for petrol power in these days of electrification

Needs to Soothe on a long motorway commute without costing the earth on fuel; be endlessly versatile without being annoyingly cumbersome

Mileage 10,303 List price £53,530 Target Price £49,273 Price as tested £57,210 Dealer price now £39,500 Private price now £30,818 Official fuel economy 36.2 mpg Test fuel economy 44.4 mpg Running costs (excluding depreciation) Petrol £1777

30 September 2024 – Suited and booted

I daresay not many Audi A6 Avant drivers wear the much-maligned Mullet hairstyle, but in the kindest possible way, the wagon and the weave stand for the same values. The Mullet, you see, is short and orderly – almost formal – around the forehead, but it's allowed to run wild behind the ears. Business up front, party out back, as they say. And that sums the A6 Avant up perfectly. It wears a sharp suit, but it’s always ready for leisure.

The A6 Avant is the consummate executive express. Express? Absolutely, the 0-62mph sprint officially takes 6.3sec, and that’s pretty nippy for such an imposing machine. Executive? Well, yes. Just look around inside. I’ve still yet to drive anything at all sensibly priced that can match the A6 for interior finish. Everything fits together beautifully, and the materials really are top notch.

But at the end of a long week’s relaxing, supremely comfortable wafting, the Avant is ready to let its hair down and have some fun. It proved the perfect partner on my summer camping trip to Cornwall, for example.

Okay, in terms of absolute capacity, some estate cars have bigger boots; the A6 Avant musters 565 litres, versus 615 litres for the Mercedes-Benz E-Class Estate (with both cars being upstaged by the 690 litres of the much cheaper Skoda Superb Estate). The A6 Avant’s steeply sloping rear windscreen also rules it out from carrying really bulky items.

No Audi Avant has ever been about pure load-lugging potential, though; they’re more geared towards facilitating a varied lifestyle. They can carry more sets of golf clubs than a saloon, for example. When packing my car for the camping trip, other than the tent, folding chairs and stove, most of our gear was in soft bags and the car just kept gobbling it down. 

A look at my real-world fuel consumption log reports a high of 44.4mpg and a worst figure of 32.9mpg. In honesty, I started out by expecting the norm to be closer to that latter figure. The fact that the A6 proved so much more economical not only seems amazing for a 251bhp petrol car with four-wheel drive, but also had me pondering how combustion engines are demonized these days, despite being more efficient than ever.  

I’m pretty sure I’d have enjoyed the A6 even more if I’d fully digested its 404-page owner’s manual at the beginning of my time with it. You see, by consulting it towards the end, I found solutions to some of the little niggles that previously annoyed me.

For instance, while Audi’s Virtual Cockpit instrument panel is truly superb, with its high-resolution, full-colour 12.3in display that’s configurable every which way, and its ability to place full 3D mapping (complete with satellite imagery) right in front me meant I didn’t have to glance over at the centre-mounted screen to find your way. However, when trying to follow a route, I couldn’t stop it zooming out, seemingly at random, to show an area roughly 25-miles across, with myriad irrelevant warnings of road closures I was nowhere near. 

Having belatedly read the manual, I discovered how to switch the auto-zoom off through a menu selected by the steering wheel buttons, and from that point I never looked at the sat-nav in the central screen again. 

Would I change anything if I ordered an A6 Avant again? Well, part of me thinks it would have been better with a diesel engine. As flexible (and remarkably frugal) as my car’s four-cylinder petrol engine was, the lazier power delivery of a diesel would have suited its laid-back demeanor. That said, what it really needs is a big, smooth six-cylinder diesel like Audi's effortlessly powerful 3.0-litre TDI engine, and that was discontinued in the A6 back in 2021.

So, in fact, I’d just re-order the exact same car. The only additional feature I crave is a heated steering wheel, but that seems to have fallen off the options list. I suspect that’s because production of the A6 is being run down ahead of the arrival of its electric replacement, the Audi A6 e-tron. This will be offered in both Sportback hatch and Avant forms, consigning the saloon to history.

If you’re worried about missing the boat, though, and fancy an A6 Avant that favours petrol rather than being plugged in, buying nearly new is the answer. Judging on the part-exchange value for mine, you should be able to find a year-old example for about the same price as a brand new Audi A5, and that’s a huge amount of extremely capable car for the money. For business, it's a pleasure. For pleasure? It's the business.

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