Almost every car that hits showrooms this or any other year will have rival models in its metaphorical sights in attempts to grasp its makers a bigger market share. Standard motoring business. The slight difference with the latest entirely new addition to Audi's fast-expanding SUV/crossover "Q" range is that its competition might hail from within.
I give you the Audi Q2, which may very well do just about everything that its bigger brother the Q3 has attempted to deliver in the six years since its debut – and also have a decent chance of killing it off in the process. Not that Audi quite sees things like that: in its version of the lineage, the Q2 is a direct descendent of its 2012 concept the Crosslane and is neither an SUV, a crossover or any existing genre of vehicle. Let’s not even mention the associated promotional hashtag alluding to this supposedly hitherto unbroken ground, because it’s really just too annoying. If you feel like your day is going a touch too well and needs derailing, Google can help you out.
You can hold the front page, though, because the wheel hasn’t actually been reinvented. But in a crowded sector, the Q2 is a nifty little crossover that builds nicely on the scalable Q-range shape – it’s certainly the best-looking little city runaround that Audi has on its books.
It won’t surprise many people who are vaguely au fair with the German carmaker to learn that the Q2 is based on the A3 platform. It shows: this is a funkier, slightly bulgier alternative, with scant overhangs front and back that mean it’s tailor-made for nipping around urban landscapes.
The target market is clearly younger drivers, evident in many of the sunny paint-job options, circular air-conditioning vents and the customisable “blades” on the C pillars – which look very swish, but actually hamper rear three-quarter visibility a bit. The flattened-off bottom to the steering wheel and carbon fibre pops of coloured trim suggest racy intent, and there is indeed a Sport mode to engage, with optional sequential shifting via the gearstick or flappy paddles. Sport doesn’t offer a huge leap forward in terms of performance, but you get some extra revs before gear changes that at least give the overarching impression that you’re hustling along with a touch more urgency.
There are three engine options: an eco-friendly 1.0L, a 1.4L (both two-wheel drive and currently available in the UAE) and a 2.0 quattro that Audi promises is coming to the Middle East later this year. Back in the day, the prospect of a 1.4L in anything more than a supermini, let alone a chunky little four-seater, would have had you fretting whether it might be underpowered, but that’s rarely a concern when it comes to 21st-century engines. And so it proves with the Q2’s 1.4L, which is perfectly ample on a blink-and-you-would-miss-it short first drive around the relatively sedate streets of Bahrain on its regional debut. But it’s only after a longer subsequent road test in rural England that the Q2, this time with S Line trim, begins to click with me, showing its perkiness both in towns and on the open road. The S Line designation does seem to remove some of the interior’s youthful vigour, however, replacing colour with a predilection for black.
Contrasting the specs between comparable Q2 and Q3 models is, on many levels, a game of spot the difference. The 1.4L variants have very little to choose between them – power and torque outputs are identical; the Q2 nips from standstill to 100kph quicker (8.5 seconds versus 8.9 seconds) and, at 212kph, edges the top-speed stakes by 8kph, which makes sense, given it’s 200 kilograms lighter.
Indeed, if you’re not planning to cart around half of your worldly belongings – the Q2’s luggage compartment is 55 litres down on the Q3’s 460 litres – it’s hard to make a case for the larger car in terms of daily use. The Q3 is 100 millimetres higher, yet the Q2 boasts better headroom, which is some wizardry in action.
Inside the Q2, there’s very little to criticise, with an abundance of slick construction you would expect from the German manufacturer. Perhaps the only small annoyance is the slight clunkiness of the infotainment system, which is controlled via a knob and buttons on the central console, when the 12.3-inch display initially looks like it should be touchscreen, but other kit, such as the head-up display and the stop-start system, goes some way to compensating.
The turbocharged 1.4L’s 150hp sounds modest, but it never really lacks for sensible pace – sure, you won’t be embarrassing any supercars at traffic lights, but you also won’t be left cursing while attempting to gather momentum to highway speeds. And whether you’re using the Q2 as an urban runaround or commuting in cruise control, it has enough character to keep you engaged, while backing it up with the mechanical chops to take just about whatever you throw at it, so long as you’re not intending to go any farther off-road than bumping over the occasional kerb or patch of rough ground.
aworkman@thenational.ae
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