What was available was a selection of powertrain options mostly in the European style. Having a go at a 180-hp 1.8TFSI (we’ll get this as a front-driver only) with the same six-speed automatic that all Canada-bound A3s will have, I can report that the 10 percent less powerful car had plenty of pep, so more will surely be better.
Speaking of engines, that’s why we’re in Hungary in the first place. Volkswagen Auto Group has an enormous engine-plant in Györ, just outside Budapest, which has just celebrated its twentieth anniversary and produces something like two million motors per year. With a skilled population already in place, setting up the assembly of the new A3 here just made sense – the Hungarian plant will be responsible for all global production except for China, which is a big enough emerging market to rate its own factory.
    2014 Audi A3 Sedan. Click image to enlarge |
Let me come back to the six-speed automatic for a moment. While this transmission shifted smoothly and didn’t seem to hesitate much on kick-down, it’s not quite as good as the seven-speed option that the 1.4L Euro-only engine gets, and certainly not as much fun as the solid, accurate six-speed manual transmission.
Audi is quick to point out that North Americans don’t buy manuals except in sports cars, but I’m not convinced: manual versions of the old body-style A4 always seem to have higher resale values, and there’s at least some enthusiast demand for a nicely appointed all-wheel-drive sedan with three pedals. Maybe they’d only see a 10 percent take-rate on the stick-shift, but not giving consumers a choice rates a boo-urns from me – the S3 might (and only might) be available with a manual.
You will be able to choose whether or not to outfit your A3 with Audi’s Quattro system, and while the roads we drove on were perfectly dry, the Quattro-equipped models we drove stayed planted through rough patches and undulating curves.
The other engine option available to Canadians – though unfortunately not in a Quattro version – is a 2.0L turbodiesel making 150 hp and 237 lb-ft of torque, and returning fuel economy of just 4.1 L/100 km in highway driving. This thing is an absolute peach, sounds great, pulls like the proverbial freight train, and doesn’t even really run out of steam too badly in the upper rev ranges. Fifteen years from now, someone is going to import the six-speed manual Quattro version I drove under grey market rules and have a heck of a great-driving car. For now, we’re getting an automatic front-driver that’s still pretty okay.
Last to arrive on our shores, probably not until the tail end of 2014, will be the upcoming S3. This pocketiest of rockets will have a 300-horsepower 2.0L turbo and Quattro as standard. It looks fantastic.
Really though, you hardly need anything like that power to make the A3 interesting. While highway cruising revealed a competent cruiser, smooth despite a short wheelbase and nearly as quiet as Lexus’s new IS, flinging the littlest Audi around the ribbons of country road showed the car to be a nimble little back-road burner. The A3 shares its basic platform with the new Golf and upcoming TT, and in many ways feels like a GTI that’s been scrubbed up and fitted into a business suit.
Like most Audis, the steering isn’t really what you’d call communicative, but it is quick and direct and my seat-of-the-pants-o-meter registered an official score of “Whee!” for the chassis even in the base, front-drive, automatic 1.4L cars. Put the A3 on a track with a BMW 1 Series and the Audi’s front-driver roots would probably show through, but on a back road with sudden jolts and unexpected tractors, it’s very good fun. S-Line models with larger 19-inch alloys were a trifle choppy in the rough stuff but that’s always the price you pay for big wheels.
