Audi’s smallest SUV, the Q2, is a youthful and useful number for the urbanite.
DRIVER’S LICENCE
4 Number Of Audi Q Models He Has Driven
Dr Kong Yongyao
He usually likes his cars low and small, but has finally warmed to the automotive oxymoron of the urban-SUV.
In my mind, all Audis are silver. This is a brand indelibly linked with the mental image of brushed steel as it would be applied on a legal office’s super-high-end coffee machines and designer stereos. Buttoned down, grown up, sober and the embodiment of modern industrial chic.
Not this time. Today, Audi welcomes me to Duebendorf Air Base in Zurich after having festooned its walls with graffiti of a riotously varied palette.
A sprinkling of new Q2s are presented to us via the dramatic opening of hangar doors and a large helping of generated mist shot through with psychedelic disco lights.
The shock to my senses delivers a clear message: This is Audi letting its hair down and infusing its smallest, most affordable SUV with youthful vim.
Youthful it has to be, for the little Audi sits below even the Q3, Mercedes GLA and BMW X1 in a size class hitherto unpopulated by the brand’s German brethren.
I’m not sure if the people at Mercedes and BMW who named the GLA and X1 were cognizant of room in the market for an even smaller premium SUV, but come competition time, they’re going to have a big alphanumeric headache.
For now, the Q2 has for company only the slightly leftfield MINI Countryman and mainstream fare like the Mazda CX-3 and epidemically popular Honda Vezel. Of course, Audi will also be looking to tempt punters to step up from their Corollas and Golfs.
I take a 1-litre manual Q2 with front-wheel-drive, semiindependent rear suspension and passive dampers out of the darkened hangar and into Zurich’s lunchtime traffic.
This is the engine and chassis setup we’ll get in Singapore, albeit with a 7-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox.
For other markets, Audi does make a four-wheel-drive variant of the Q2, with fully independent multi-link suspension and adaptive dampers available further up the range.
By the way, buyers will be glad to tell their insurance agents that automatic emergency braking is standard on all Q2s.
After crawling along for a while, I pull into, of all places, the carpark of a dinosaur museum. Here, I can take in the car’s form fully.
As an industry idea, the little luxury crossover shows how far we’ve diverged from the days when SUVs were enormous and agricultural mud-pluggers.
The Q2’s squared-off stance and short overhangs successfully toe the line between ruggedness and bauble-like city fashion. Polygonal surfacing dominates the exterior aesthetic. This design paradigm is unique to the Q2 in Audi’s lineup, and is complemented by a contrastingly coloured C-pillar Audi dubs the “floating blade”.
Stand a further few paces back and you can appreciate as a whole its distinctness from, say, an A3 hatchback – at least more so than the GLA distinguishes itself from the A-Class.
To my eyes, the Q2’s overall appearance is recognisably Audi, with a healthy garnishing of spunk, while not being exactly beautiful.
Inside, the news is almost universally good. The dashboard borrows heavily from the A3, a paragon of stylish minimalism.
In the Q2, the atmosphere is enlivened further, as part of an optional illumination package, by smartly appointed inlays with colour-selectable backlighting.
This dash (pardon the pun) of colour bleeding through a perforated panel on the passenger side is executed more subtly and handsomely than the boisterous fireworks display you get surrounding the central display in MINIs. Choose not to tick the option box, and you will get a still attractive matte bodycoloured insert.
Don’t squint and stare belligerently while tapping on every surface, though, for you’ll eventually discover where Audi has kept costs down.
“This is Audi letting its hair down and infusing its smallest, most affordable SUV with youthful VIM.”
Some hollow plastics are installed where costlier Audis would never deign to put them, particularly on the door cards. The row of touch-sensitive infotainment buttons are also a black plastic rather than the classier silver switches in an A4. Yet, the aesthetic is sophisticated enough and tasteful.
The press presentation goes to great lengths to highlight the new car’s infotainment features. Audi’s excellent Virtual Cockpit, a configurable screen that replaces conventional dials in the instrument cluster, is installed in our test car.
In Europe, the system is capable of displaying Google Earth images to match the snow-capped geography outside the windows, not to mention perform acts of information-age wizardry like current fuel prices at different locations in real time. In Singapore, however, many connectivity features will be limited due to tricky licensing issues.
From bumper to bumper, the Q2 is 197mm and 119mm shorter than the Q3 and A3 Sportback respectively, so its footprint is compact. But the Q2’s clever packaging and utilisation of the versatile MQB platform mean it is able to accommodate five adults without inflicting misery and has a boot only 15 litres smaller than the Q3’s.
Most families who found decent utility in a standard family-size five-door hatchback will likely have little to complain about with the Q2.
I set off again after lunch, and it isn’t long before I wriggle free of the city’s strangling speed limits and begin ascending the serpentine Alpine roads running through Switzerland’s countryside.
If Audi intended to put all of us motoring writers in a good mood, then they have made an exceptional choice with the location, for the view out the Q2’s windows is breathtaking.
From sparkling lakes to spectacular snow-capped mountains, our route takes us through landscapes spotted with cosy cottages which are delicately manicured with flowers blooming from their parapets.
Ricola commercials do not come close to doing Switzerland’s sheer beauty justice. What I would have done for the luxury of time to stop at an Alpine café for a strudel, and it takes all my willpower to tear my attention back to the task at hand.
It’s fortunate that I’m concentrating, because the dual carriageways are narrow, with some steeper sections lined with perilously close stone walls. Within the towns, cyclists swarm about impudently.
Audi trumpets a “go-kart feel” about the Q2’s handling – a curious phrase suspiciously reminiscent of MINI’s remit.
Sure, the Q2 is nimble and faithful in its responses, but at no time do I feel, as I would in a MINI, like I am piloting a hypercaffeinated chihuahua.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing, as most importantly, the Q2 communicates the position of its four wheels with clarity.
The passive variableratio setup also makes intown manoeuvring a cinch while remaining stable and predictable in hard cornering.
On top of the customary vantage point that an SUV offers, the car is therefore easy to place on the road and within traffic, without really raising the pulse.
Rather, the Q2 feels, well, like a small Audi. Body control is impressive for a tall vehicle, and car will always let go at the front first if the reasonably high grip levels are exceeded. Bumps are allowed to make themselves known but never to jar, and a fourhour jaunt through Switzerland is kind enough on my spine. Passengers on the backseat perched over the rear axle may fare slightly worse, however.
All of this means the Q2 motors along with a muted solidity that suggests substance and expense, with a restrained nod towards sportiness. Just the way Audi’s customers like it, I suspect.
Turbocharged 3-cylinder motors have rapidly begun appearing in the engine bays of everything from Volkswagen Golfs to BMW 3 Series saloons and even Ford Mondeos. The 3-pot format has characteristics that are remarkably similar across brands, which is to say a peppy eagerness to rev, subjective thrust greater than the numbers suggest, and a growl that is quite pleasant.
Audi’s 3-cylinder is a commendable example of the breed. I can ignore the piffling numbers (116bhp and 200Nm) and simply enjoy the fact that we are just about keeping up with a V6 diesel A6 in front of me, driven enthusiastically by Audi Singapore’s PR manager.
There are no discernible torque holes in the rev range and the engine’s output is well matched to the car’s weight, so acceleration is modest but linear and willing. Lag on stepoff is inevitably present, but insufficient to frustrate or bog down smooth progress.
I never feel the need to mash the throttle pedal just to get moving, and metering out the desired amount of juice required to slot the car into traffic gaps is easy.
The business case for a small off roader in today’s market practically makes itself. Couple that with the allure of a premium badge and Audi could have planted the four rings on a basic steel box and watch it print money. Yet, this is not a car company that does things halfheartedly. Considerable effort has obviously been put into creating a delightfully refreshing product.
The Q2 certainly does what it needs, and does it well, as a practical, technologically modern and dynamically competent city-biased SUV, while managing to feel satisfyingly upmarket.
On this evidence, if the pricing is right, Audi has a formidable new number to play the SUV game.
“Audi trumpets a “go-kart feel” about the Q2’S handling – a phrase reminiscent of mini’s remit.”
