AUDI A4 SEDAN 2022 REVIEW

 AUDI A4 SEDAN 3 SERIES C-CLASS 

and this is the 2022 audi a4 45 tfsi quattro sedan now while you might think the a4 sedan is probably the mainstay of audi's medium-sized range it's actually not anymore the a5 sport back out sells it 40 percent to 32 percent with the s models taking 20 percent well that's at least what audi said when this car launched last year so we're here to investigate what still makes this sedan a good thing to buy now for starters it costs 10 000 less than the sportback so you're getting more value for money you're also getting more headroom so that's one reason to have it this car in particular has a couple of special options just to make it look a little bit more different from the normal a4 and i personally think they work really we at the front the lights are what was new in 2020 as well as what we shall discover when we walk down the side of the car this gloss black pack which is on the grill on the mirror caps and various other bits on the car cost eight hundred dollars these alloy wheels which are 19s which are already standard but these are audi sport 19s to have this individual design they cost 385 which is seems like a bit of a bargain on an audi they have 245 hankook ventures tires which addies have run that brand for quite some time now along the side here here's where the new a4 is different when this car got a facelift in 2020 it actually changed almost every panel down the side of the car even though it looks kind of the same so it has these cool little wheel arch blisters that stick out over both front and rear wheels just to give it a little bit more personality whereas the a5 already had creases all over and didn't need any more this one needed a couple of bits extra to make the 2020s look more contemporary as we come around the back here so we've got more gloss around the window frames here and at the back it has these quite cool new rear lights which we have sequential indicators in which give it a little bit of pizzazz although that doesn't have those at the front and we have what is a sedan is known for which is a decent sized boot in the a4 here it's a 460 litre boot it's typically beautifully trimmed like any other audi and there's a whole bunch of features inside like cargo nets little side bins in this case because it's a quattro it only has a space saver under the floor but still 460 liters is heaps and that seat is 40 20 40 with a ski port so it goes almost flat so there is a little bit of practicality actually more than a little bit going on here with a car like this now while i might normally criticize the a4s interior being too much grey this car is already grey it's a 1 531 optional color called quantum grey which looks very much like the old nado graph old rs models and i think it looks great and somehow the interior for that blends with it as well because it also has a gloss black interior here too so whoever spekt this car at audi australia i think did a pretty good job most of the things that are in here are standard including this new 12.3 inch touchscreen that debuted in 2020 that is super slick and fast in its operation i love it it's got embedded wi-fi in here it's attached to a 10-speaker stereo with 180 watts and look it's okay it's good with music that's recorded recently and that's electronic probably but it doesn't really like music from the past even if it has been remastered you are better off to just skip this all together and go for the 19 speaker banging offs and 755 what thing and dump that standard piece of crap because it's just not quite up to the standard of the rest of this interior and it's a really good interior the sports seats are standard as they are in the normal 35 tfsi the steering wheel fantastic it's round remember those has this little silver bit in the bottom that does reflect in sunlight but everything in here feels really well sorted the driving position is great the steering wheel feels great we have the virtual cockpit in front which is still i think almost hasn't been bettered in terms of its clarity and just the classiness of its look the rest of the a-force interior works really well especially considering this car has been around since 2016 because it got all the fundamentals right so most of it is actually pretty much the same the touchscreen has removed the mmi controller so we do have this little pop-up bin here that i've kind of wondered what it's good for other than mentos for guests but i actually think it might be good for mcdonald's chips or fries or whatever they call them there i think that would be perfect you could rest your hand on the gear lever there and just slowly feed yourself and put on weight the gear lever is the same as it's always been it falls really nicely to hand we have audi volkswagen's beautiful center armrest here that again just feels ergonomically perfect a pair of cup holders one usb and a 12 volt here but another usb shoots a usbc there in the back one wireless charging here with wireless apple carplay that is seamless and works really well and even things like having proper door grabs on all of the doors we have tobacco roof lining in here with everyone having a roof grab which is pointless for the driver and this one litre cabinet bottle fits in both front doors as well as the back doors as i shall show you the a4 sedan isn't quite as roomy as in the wagon it does have a little bit of a slope in the headlining here but it still has a ton of room for a medium-sized premium sedan certainly better than the current c-class although we haven't driven the new generation one and i think probably even better than the three series although it's very close considering that this is a five-year-old car it was so far ahead of the competition when it was new for this sort of stuff and it still feels great now this seat is really comfortable has really good under thigh support i'm slightly elevated over the front so i can see kind of everything again the tobacco headlining is nice and light it doesn't have that oppressive feeling of having dark colored headlining the center seat here is actually suitable although not for very long periods but better than most we do have this really cool little armrest here that does feel really solid unlike the q5 we drove recently it has a nice little carpeted bin here and these very nifty little cup holders that don't feel like they're going to break like the q5s ones and clack they've got little vents in here with temperature control but no fan control but that's still fine i suppose we're the a4 starting to show its age a little bit is that it only has a 12 wide outlet here it doesn't have any usb stuff but you could always run one on a long cord from the usbc in the center there and finally we do this takes proper drinks from the doors and has proper door grabs so this is about utility as much as it is about luxury the combined fuel consumption figure for the a445 tfsi is 7.1 liters per hundred kilometers whereas we average 9.2 liters per hundred kilometres the warranty for audi in australia is three years or unlimited kilometres which is two years less than volkswagens while the servicing for the recommendation is 12 months or 15 000 with the five year service package for this car costing 2 920 until the a4 on this mlb evo platform i don't think all of the engines were really as fizzy and as lovely as they could have been but the one that absolutely stands out is what powers this 45 tfsi which is the same as the old two-liter tfsi before it got renamed in 2019. now as we're about to discover because i'm about to flatten it there's a little bit of rasp as it changes gears it just really hauls now 5.8 seconds to 100 is the sort of performance that would have once been acceptable or great in an s4 and yet here we have it in just a regular two liter a4 183 kilowatts at 5 000 the six and a half thousand revs 370 newton meters from 1600 to 4500 and a 7-speed dual clutch that's now as refined as it's ever been and you have a genuine performance car masquerading as just a regular sedan even the all drive system as we just saw come out of these corners it's just knows when to transfer power to the back you can flip it down into sport here to go down a gear when you need to it's just that sounds good really good that's so nice i think bmw's 2 liter would give it a run for its money perhaps a tiny bit better you know 330i but certainly not current gen mercedes c-class models at least until it gets the update the rest of this car is just all around competent it does have optional adaptive suspension which is 1100 although it's sports adaptive which means it's 20mm lower than standard and is quite firm although you can select comfortable in the individual mode in the center here and it does manage to be reasonably comfortable but this is more about smooth road sports rather than bumpy aussie road comfy if that's a problem for you do not buy the sedan at all just forget about it or the coupe even just buy the a4 or road because if you can handle having a wagon then what you gain out of that car having sort of 50 odd millimeters of ground clearance extra plus optional adaptive dampers is this level of comfy fluency that doesn't quite be part of the package in this 45 tfsi sedan this is essentially a sports sedan now obviously with that ride it does tend to get a little bit abrasive over bad surfaces and if you don't option the adaptive dampers it becomes even more so because sports suspension is standard even with the fixed rate dampers so you're getting the look and you're getting the performance but you're also getting a suspension tune that is generally designed for german roads and not ours while this a4 already has a lot of safety embedded in it including having a really great grippy overdrive chassis great vision and a general level of smooth effortless predictability and performance you do have to pay extra for some safety kit that's part of the assistance package plus which is 2 900 d and brings collision avoidance assist junction turn assist a head up display park assist a 360 degree camera and predictive efficiency assist which tells you when to back off the accelerator knowing that the car will keep coasting along because this drivetrain also has a mild hybrid system for giving it that extra bit of idle stop smoothness and that coastability that brings the fuel consumption down to a pretty impressive number for a car that weighs approaching 1600 kilos so there you have it an a4 sedan which is not a wagon and it's not a coupe or a sportback it's just the plain old sedan but i don't reckon it's really that plain i think this one looks really quite good that engine is so spirited and lovely and the chassis still really does do fun things even though i don't think that it rides as well as it should at least with the sports version of the adaptive suspension but when you think about how much car prices have gone up these days and you look at that audi there the only thing that's really missing is a decent stereo because we know what i think about the standard one and it's under 80 000 before on road which is not so bad it looks like it's probably worth 90 to 100 and i think that's a good thing and you don't need the s4's performance because that two little turbo has kind of got all you really need i reckon it's fizzy it's lovely and it's efficient so if you haven't.