Category: Small Family 
Price Range: £15,265 to £26,525
High-quality interior, lower CO2 emissions.
Premium price for a premium car, magnetic ride system has to be used wisely.
A few nips here, a few tucks there, and the refreshed A3 is now better than ever.
You have to hand it to Audi: along with German rivals BMW, it is certainly working hard to improve the efficiency of its engines, with across-the-board improvements to CO2 levels in the new A3. The 1.4 TFSI engine, for example, loses 7g/km to come in at 140g/km, while the most powerful petrol engine, the 197bhp 2.0-litre TFSI, drops 15g/km to 171g/km. This will be especially good news when the number of road tax bands increases to 13 in 2009, when just a few fewer g/km could save you a few quid, especially in the year of purchase.
The engine tweaks also mean that fuel consumption has also improved, with the star of the show the super-efficient 1.9 TDIe returning 62.8mpg on the combined cycle and even the 2.0-litre TFSI just missing out on beating the 40mpg barrier with 39.2mpg.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Audi A3
wrote on 18 05 2007
wrote on 07 10 2006
wrote on 09 06 2006