Very first Drive Overview
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Commit to sweating and twitching, and 60 mpg is attainable.
Third. We completed third. To launch the TDI version of its new A3 sedan, Audi arranged a fuel-mileage challenge. The purpose? Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Coronado, California, on one tank of diesel. That’s a distance of 834 miles. We mollified ourselves with the age-old “well, at least we’re on the podium” chestnut. But technical editor Eric Tingwall chided us through Twitter, “Let me channel Sherman right here: If you didn’t win, you lost. Sherman would’ve won.” If the mild-mannered, affable Tingwall is publicly wagging a finger of shame at you, it’s bad. And he’s appropriate. Tech director Don Sherman would’ve won.
We’d suffered 759 miles across New Mexico, Arizona, and most of the width of California. So when the good man from Audi recommended that we wouldn’t make it—having hit zero fuel about halfway up the summit on Interstate 8—we stupidly believed him. That belief cost us what might’ve been a win. Perhaps in the interest of preserving their fuel-injection pumps, Ingolstadt’s representatives had informed us that the A3 TDI had only half a gallon of fuel left when the fuel-variety readout hit miles. This proved not to be the case: Far more foolhardy souls pressed on and covered the remaining distance to the coast, having hit zero on the gauge at about the exact same time we did.
On the other hand, flush with diesel and free of charge from the constraints of competitors, we took the chance to lastly open the taps on the torquey diesel sedan, the most recent variant of the MQB-boned A3 to hit our shores. We also turned on the air conditioning. The auto still equipped with our apparently ineffective—but hopefully intimidating—Walmart-issue cardboard-box rear-fender fairings, we launched our tiny front-drive Audi down some San Diego County back roads.
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The TDI’s gas-fired Quattro counterpart lately aced a comparison test in which it was pitted against Mercedes-Benz’s CLA250 4MATIC and the BMW 2-series, and if the FWD diesel car—all-wheel drive isn’t available—doesn’t offer you the revvy tenacity of the Quattro model, it at least gives some visceral pleasures of its own. Equipped with the very same 150-hp, 236-lb-ft variant of the EA288 diesel identified in the new Volkswagen Golf TDI, the Audi is hardly a slouch, especially when it comes to midrange energy delivery.
Audi’s common 6-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission delivers smooth, swift, and reputable gearchanges. It appears to default to reduced gears even in manual mode, which was a issue when we have been gunning for efficiency above all else—that may be the 1st time we’ve complained about a transmission for wanting to hold a lower gear—but we identified ourselves without having a gripe during the mountain-road blasts.
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When cornering, the front finish turns in and plants itself with authority, supplying a lot of grip. We know this to be the full truth since, for the duration of the mpg-focused portion of our drive, we avoided making use of the accelerator and brakes to set up for corners in the interest of power conservation. Maximum efficiency demands kinetic dynamism, so we followed a steer-and-pray approach. The sticky Continental tires held our chosen lines with an admirable doggedness.
Inside, we found the A3 to be typically Audi-pleasant, although the vast swath of soft-touch material spanning the dash requirements to be of a larger grade to successfully execute the bold, sparse appear the automaker has pursued with this automobile. The seats had been comfortable for the long haul, and despite the fact that some have complained about the B-pillars’ intrusion into peripheral sightlines, we didn’t locate it to be an concern for the duration of a journey with a lot of furtive side glances to verify for quicker-moving traffic.
As for the efficiency competition, it was calculated that we achieved 60.1 mpg over 759 miles. This was in utter hair-shirt mode, using twitchy-foot throttle techniques while monitoring the quick returns on the in-dash efficiency show, running far beneath the speed limit, using the aerodynamic largesse of massive-rig wakes, cursing each rise in the road, and normally suffering for every single mile. Without engaging in any of that occasionally ill-advised folderol, you’d very easily find yourself returning figures someplace in the low-to-mid 40s on the highway. And if you wanted to thrash a canyon at the end of the day? The A3 TDI would be perfectly happy to oblige.
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