Audi A4 Road Test / Car Review

The importance of the A4 can't be stated to heavily for Audi. This, after all, was the car that made its marque back at its original launch in 1995 and the Ingolstadt brand hasn't looked back since, now regularly out-selling its BMW and Mercedes rivals here. It's a success story that won't continue if the company gets its foundational model wrong. If you didn't already know that, then you could probably guess the fact by looking at the latest third generation model, a car that is firmly evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Mind you, evolution seems to work for Audi. People will buy this A4, just as they bought its predecessor, precisely because it doesn't have the love-it-or-hate-it Marmite-style looks of a BMW 3 Series. Mercedes latest C-Class however, might prove to be a tougher nut to crack.

So what's new from a driver's point of view? It had better be good since Audi are positioning this car as "the sportiest in the premium sector". For the time being on the British market, the company talks of a range of "new or extensively revised engines", including two directly injected FSI petrol units and three common rail directly injected TDI diesels.

Shiny new oily bits under the bonnet are all very well but rightly, the engineers thought it better to spend the bulk of t