Updated: This is the Audi A3 Saloon, the third member of the Audi A3 family. We will be driving the car in mid-June, while the UK on-sale date for the new Audi A3 Saloon is summer 2013. Customer deliveries of the standard car will start in October, while the hot S3 saloon will reach customers by January 2014. Prices have yet to be confirmed.
We first saw the A3 Saloon on the eve of the the New York Motor Show even though its motor show debut is earmarked for the Shanghai Motor Show 2013 this weekend.
Designed to appeal to younger customers looking for a sporty but fun car, the A3 Saloon is intended to be a first company car for young professionals, particularly in Russia, the US, China and, to a lesser extent, Europe. Partly this is down to a cultural difference where Chinese professionals cannot drive a car that is larger than their superior's so manufacturers are aiming to broaden the range of all the cars they offer to accomodate.
We spoke to Heiko Pabst von Ohain, head of product marketing for the A3: “The car is 4,456mm long, making it 25cm shorter than an A4, but 15cm longer but same wheelbase than an A3 Sportback. It also has 425-litres of boot space, which is 55 less than an A4. All of this is to make sure it is distanced from the new A4.”
Alexander Pesch, head of technical project management for the A3 line-up told us: “The A3 saloon is all about delivering efficiency of every millimetre, so while the car looks low and sporty, there is only 11mm less rear headroom than an A3 Sportback.”
We sat in the back of the saloon and head and legroom for a six-footer sitting behind another six-footer was pretty good. More impressive was the size of the door aperture which gives way more space than the Mercedes CLA to get your head and feet into the car. The boot space is good too with a well-shaped, rectangular space, although while the rear seats split 60:40 they don't go fully flat. Audi says that with the seats down, the A3 Saloon has more boot space than the A3 Sportback.
Next in line for the A3 family is the A3 Cabriolet, which will debut at the Frankfurt show in September. An A3 Avant has also been considered, apparently, but it's not likely unless both the Mercedes CLA Shooting Brake and BMW 2 Series GT are a runaway success.
Three turbocharged four-cylinder engines will be offered from launch. These include a 138bhp 1.4 TFSI that takes the A3 from 0-62mph in 8.4 seconds – but with cylinder deactivation tech and stop-start, the engine promises 60.1mpg economy and emissions of only 109g/km. A 178bhp 1.8 TFSI giving 0-62mph in 7.3 seconds will also be available, along with a 148bhp 2.0 TDI diesel with 67.3mpg and 108g/km of CO2.
At the head of the range, though, will be the storming four-wheel-drive S3, which will rival the Mercedes CLA 45 AMG. With its 2.0-litre TFSI engine delivering nearly 300bhp, it promises huge pace – the six-speed manual version does 0-62mph in 5.3 seconds and the seven-speed dual-clutch S tronic model takes 4.9 seconds.
Order books open for the A3 Saloon in the summer, with deliveries starting in the autumn. The S3 will hitting dealers a few months later. While there’s no word on price, expect a small rise over the A3 Sportback, which costs from £19,825.
The saloon is expected to follow the hatchback's line-up and offer customers SE, Sport and S line trims while Audi is likely to add special edition 'Black' and 'Business' models later in the lifecycle.
Audi has given details on some of the options that will be available in the saloon. Customers can spec their car with a panoramic sunroof, Audi's key access and authorisation system and full LED headlights.
Top-of-the-range MMI Navigation plus comes with an SSD hard drive with 64GB of storage, a DVD drive and voice control. Meanwhile MMI High allows passengers to surf the net through an integrated WLAN hotspot, and access to Google Earth and Google Street View.
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Mercedes CLA has forced Audi to offer A3 saloon. In parts of the world Audi has dropped A3's price to compete with the baby Merc.
Will Audi offer similar savings to the buyers in the UK and Europe? Or do we have to keep paying higher prices hypnotised by the mantra of "perceived quality"?
I like it, but I just wish it looked less like an A4 with its arse hacked off.
They simply stretch or crop any picture of an Audi for the next model...
I seem to remember that the A3 started life as a hatchback version of the A4, so why is it now the A3 saloon. Is it because the A4 has since got bigger?
Here in the UK - A3 saloon is absolutley pointless.
Audi are claiming a 425 litre boot for this model but I'd be interested to know the boot capacity of the quattro models as the 4wd gubbins tends to steal depth from the luggage space.
Tigger why do you say pointless. This A3 Sedan is now the size of the original Mk1 A4 so there should be plenty of room if that's your concern. Nath I agree with you about the A4 styling I just wonder why they didn't save themselves money and use the body blanks from the A4!
CLA > A3 Saloon
How so?
The a3 has never been a hatchback version of the a4. It was based on a the same platform as the mk4 golf / mk1 leon which respectively had saloon versions called the bora and toledo. Audi never had a saloon version to compete with these models
Now there's a niche that never needed filling
I disagee, as an A3 Sportback driver looking at his next car in September, I quite like the look of the Saloon and will probably select it over the Sportback, this coupled with the A3's 2.0 TDI providing 150 PS and 108 g CO2, easier on the tax bill as well.
So you walk into a dealership and see two identical cars.. one without the hatch, and one with. Baffled, you ask yourself... is there any benefit at all in having the saloon over the hatch? Then you think of all the benefits of the hatch. At the end of the day the saloon is utterly pointless.
This may be a "local" issue as in Britain small (booted) saloons are not generally liked.
Cant fit my survey kit in my s3 hatch but can in saloon, and the possiblity of 4 full grown adults and not little boy racers sat comfortably is another bonus over hatch. Ill be buying or company will haha just because it dosent fit your needs, dosent mean it wont fit others
A3/S3 saloon looks far better than hatch and can cart 4 full grown adults about also not so massive that parking in london doesn't become a chore like it does in the massive A4