It’s a really nice car to look at. Elegant lines with just the right bulges over the wheel arches. Will age well.
BHPian one-77 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
These are my impressions from a test drive off the Audi Q3 Sportback
Positives
- Exterior styling. It’s a really nice car to look at. Elegant lines with just the right bulges over the wheel arches. Will age well. Probably my personal favourite in the class from the looks perspective.
- The progressive steering. It’s got the best steering amongst the competitors. Very easy to take U turns, nice to hold, decent feedback, and weighs up nicely in “dynamic mode”.
- Drive. The creamy 2.0 L petrol and 7 speed DCT, along with the Quattro AWD system make this, in my opinion, arguably the nicest car in the class to drive.
- Suspension. A tad firm, but comfortable at the same time.
- Real leather seats.
- A good sized and practical boot despite the coupe styling. Can fit the boot cover under the false floor too.
- Physical knobs for the AC with good tactile feel.
Neutral
- The interiors. Though the material quality is good, the layout is very plain and similar to other VW group cars. There’s absolutely no wow factor. Especially the centre console area.
- Key fob. Might as well belong to an old VW Polo, if you swap out the Audi logo.
- Pricing. It’s on the higher side (like every car on sale right now), but Audi does include 5-year extended warranty and 3/ 5 year maintenance in the pricing now. They were also more willing to negotiate further had we decided to go ahead.
Negatives
- Too many missing features and blank switches for the price. You’d feel like sitting in a “base variant” car. Wish they had launched a fully specced variant, or at least found a way to not have those blank switches.
- No auto hold. This is a terrible terrible miss. Makes driving in heavy traffic a chore because you either have to keep pressing the brake down or use the parking brake every time traffic slows to a stop. You can buy a kit to retrofit it online for about 15k INR, but it’s a complex installation that needs taking apart the centre console and part of the dashboard to route a new cable to the brakes/ abs module instead of the current one, and then enable the function via OBD. Will likely void the car’s warranty.
- No seat memory. It will be a task to get back your perfect position, if you hand over the car to a chauffeur or valet. Or if you and your partner take turns driving.
- No adjustable seat squab in the front.
- No usb ports in the rear.
- No connected car features which the competition offers.
- No active safety features.
- The rear seats are so contoured, that they can only seat two. Plus the transmission tunnel is huge.
- No clarity on E20 compliance.
- The VW Tiguan, with the same platform, engine, and gearbox is over 15 lacs cheaper; and it gets auto hold and memory seats.
Keyword: 2023 Audi Q3: A Hyundai Creta owner shares his impartial opinion