Audi A6 fights changing nature of luxury market
On its own terms, the newest version of the Audi A6 is an extremely accomplished German sports sedan, and does VW's largest luxury brand proud.
The $79,920 ($69,370 plus options with taxes extra) A6 4.2 Tiptronic Quattro that I drove is at least a match for a comparably equipped version of the BMW 5-Series or the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, or anything else, for that matter.
This means it's one of the premiere sedan drives in the world today, capable of delivering great comfort and safety to four adults in North America, and great performance and handling should you ever find yourself on an empty German autobahn with 125 km to cover and only 30 minutes to do it.
But the new A6 also gets caught up in a pair of currents running through the auto marketplace, and they are strong enough to give you pause. They involve nothing less than the status of luxury cars in general, and the status of the A6 within the luxury segment in particular.
Historically, people have been willing to pay more for luxury cars because they offered stuff that less-expensive cars didn't have, such as power and performance, quality, unique comfort and convenience features, and an exclusive name.
But intense pressure in less-expensive market segments has caused the car companies to raise the ante on all those vehicles' attributes, so now it's easy to get a car that costs a half (or less) as much as an A6, a 5-Series or an E-Class yet has quality and packaging levels that are a match or even better, and can do just as well in performance terms.
As for the sense of exclusivity attached to the luxury German brands, the car companies are grinding away at that by offering more and more models and going ever farther downscale. Audi itself will offer a gussied-up VW Golf as the A3, BMW Canada will bring a compact 1-series model, and Mercedes-Benz will continue the erosion that began with the C-Class Coupe and the Smart car by bringing in a B-Class model on an A-Class platform.
This tends to debase the currency of the brands and make them less worthy of paying extra for.
As for the Audi brand in particular, it is still most famous for offering all-wheel-drive to the German luxury market. When Audi started putting its Quattro system in cars 20-odd years back, it was a sensation, bringing high-speed performance to a new level.
Technological advances such as stability control have helped the rear-drive models from BMW and Mercedes close some of that gap, and now Mercedes-Benz is pushing all-wheel-drive on its E-class line.
For many people, the primary reason to buy Audi is that it's neither of the two most famous German brands, so it's less fraught with pretension.
Canadians will not really be able to appreciate the primary charms of the new A6, inasmuch as our speed limits and crowded highways tend not to allow you to find out for yourself if it is indeed the ''new benchmark in the luxury-performance segment.''