While every carmaker is looking to bring in new versions of its offerings to the auto market, the time gap between any car and its successive all-new generation is often on the scale of an entire decade. And in that gap, you’ll find plenty of minor updates as well as somewhat significant facelifts. So, nearly four years after the third-generation A3 was launched in Europe, the smallest Audi sedan has just gone under the knife for a refresh that brings the car up to speed for 2016.
The current generation of the A3 simply hasn’t been around long enough to feel dated, but Audi has tinkered with the exterior styling to make it look sportier. The front grille is now larger and sharper, while the front air-dam has also been revised to feature chunkier intakes.
The headlights too are flatter with sharper edges. At the back, there’s now a sporty rear diffusor and redesigned tail-lights. Audi has also brought in dynamic turn indicators at both ends and now offers its high-tech Matrix headlights as an option. While the car looks
more modern than ever before, some of its rivals, especially the Mercedes-Benz CLA, offer a lot more visual pizazz. This facelifted A3 now strongly resembles its larger sibling, the new A4, and at a quick glance, you’d be hard pressed to tell one car from the other.
The A3’s interiors, while very well put together with good finish, have always felt a bit spartan. To a large extent, this is still the case. However, a significant change is the addition of Audi’s ‘virtual cockpit’, which completely does away with analogue dials in the instrument panel. Instead, what you get is a high-resolution 12.3-inch TFT screen which has two view settings. In the traditional mode, the tachometer and speedometer appear as large analogue displays. In infotainment mode, the speedo and tacho are relegated to smaller
displays in the corner, with the majority of the screen area displaying between a choice of phone, audio or navigation data. You now also get a sporty flat-bottomed steering wheel which features paddle shifters for the S tronic gearbox. Even the MMI interface for the 7-inch electrically extending centre screen has been revised to make it a lot more intuitive to use. The rest of the insides remain unchanged, so if you like the interiors of the current A3, you’ll hardly find a reason to fault this refreshed cabin.
This A3 facelift comes with six engines on offer. The biggest highlight in the powertrain department was the axing of the 1.8-litre TFSI motor in favour of a newly developed 2.0-litre TFSI unit. This new engine makes 190hp of peak power and an impressive 320Nm of torque (the same as the 2.0-litre diesel). With a brand new seven-speed S tronic (dual-clutch) gearbox handling transmission duties, the A3 equipped with this motor can make the sprint to 100kph from standstill in just 6.7 seconds, and attain a top speed of 244kph.The two other motors we drove were two different tunes of the 2.0-litre four-cylinder TDI diesel motor, one producing 150hp (similar to the current India-spec 35 TDI) and another producing 184hp. The 150hp diesel also makes 340Nm of torque, while the more powerful one produces 380Nm.
Audi has gone a long way in integrating a whole bunch of driver assist features from its larger cars into the A3, such as active lane assist, pre-sense front, cross traffic assist and traffic jam assist, among others. But it’s very likely that most, if not all, of these systems won’t be available when this car comes to India.
Nor will most of the engine options. We expect Audi will offer the 2.0 TFSI along with the less powerful 2.0 TDI when the car goes on sale in the country by the end of this year. There’s no real peg on Indian pricing yet, but expect to pay a bit of premium over the current car. With all these little changes coming together to make the A3 an even more attractive proposition than ever before, we think it should certainly be worth it.
Audi A3
Dimensions
Length: 4,458mm
Width: 1,796mm
Height: 1,416mm
Wheelbase: 2,637mm
Engine
1,984cc, 4-cyl, 16-valve, turbo
Power: 190hp at 4,200-6,000rpm
Torque: 320Nm at 1,500-4,200rpm
Gearbox: 6-speed, dual clutch
