Our first impressions of Audi's new A3 compact luxury saloon.
The A3 saloon looks every bit an Audi and is another example of the company shrinking a generic design to create a new segment in its ever- widening model range. That can be good and bad. An A6 or A4 owner may not like to rub mirrors with Johnny-got-rich-latelies in their small (and far more affordable) Audi A3 saloons at traffic lights. But on the flip side, for potential A3 saloon owners, it offers the opportunity to get a pukka Audi for Skoda money.
The Audi A3 saloon looks the part too. It’s more of a scaled-down A4 than an A3 hatchback with a boot. That’s because it doesn’t share any body panels with its hatchback siblings, except for the grille, door handles and mirrors. In fact, it’s dimensionally pretty close to the original Audi A4 of the mid-1990s and even looks bigger than it actually is.
The styling of the A3 saloon is typically understated (like any other Audi), but it’s a clean, uncluttered design that is superbly proportioned, making it difficult to tell that it’s derived from a hatch. The strong shoulderline and nicely flared arches, which house 18-inch tyres on spicy alloys, give the A3 a solid and reassuring stance, but there’s no doubt it lacks the visual drama of the more aggressive and coupé-like styling of the Mercedes CLA. The good thing is that Audi retains its signature LED daytime running lights on all variants of the A3 saloon, which makes a huge difference visually. The rear has sharply styled tail-lights and a boot, both subtly designed to not make it look like an add-on. Audi however hasn’t increased the wheelbase of the A3 saloon over its hatchback. At 2636mm, the wheelbase remains the same as the Sportsback.