Audi’s latest A6 sedan is literally, technology on wheels
Early to mid 1990s were a strange time to grow up. No matter how much we might complain about the state of the economy nowadays, India was pretty much bankrupt back then. There were very few cars on the road but for those of us who lived in leafy South Delhi colonies and were exposed to an extent to Western influences, which became more pronounced after cable TV landed on our shores and older shows by Hanna-Barbera, the American animation studio filled many of our screens. One of the shows was called The Jetsons and even though it depicted a 1960s version of what we expected the future to be, there were these concepts of flying cars and three-day workweeks, neither of which came true.
And as 2020, a year where we thought, as children at least, that space travel would be a normal thing, the future has turned out to be rather different. I am not making a value judgement here, the future is just not what I expected it to be when I was in Class 6.
That brings me to cars. Back in 1991, there weren’t too many of them. And while we can rave about classic designs and the good old days, make no mistakes, the cars of today are a million times better and safer than the cars we drove during that time. Cars those days were extremely mechanical. There were no processors anywhere. The steering and throttle controls were linked directly to the wheels and the engine. As for safety, well, the Maruti Suzuki Omni still survives from that era. If you look at the ‘A-Pillars’ on that car (those are the pillars that hold the windshield in place), you’d see that compared to any other modern car, they’re barely there.
When I started driving in the mid-1990s, sneaking out in my mother’s Maruti-800, entertainment was a cheap, off-brand tape player where retrieving magnetic tape from inside by using a pencil became a bonafide skillset. The steering didn’t even have a horn in the middle. There were two buttons on the side and that was a major upgrade from the older Hindustan Ambassadors, which my grandfathers owned with a metal ring between the hub and the steering.
This brings us in a nice segue to the new Audi A6. This car, once called the Audi 100, has always been the company’s large executive sedan and is now in its eighth iteration. The old A6, which did fairly well, initially suffered in sales compared to the Mercedes-Benz E-Class and BMW 5-series because it really got a bit old compared to those two models. Which makes the quantum leap in the latest model quite dramatic, though not from the overall profile front. Audi’s designers have retained the A6 signature straight window line and from the front, Audi’s design language is clear. The dramatic change is inside, which is one heck of a car to play around with.
I was only in the A6 for half a day but I would love to spend more time exploring the features of what this car can do. The touchscreens, for example, have tactile feedback. While they’re touchscreens, you feel like you’re pressing something solid. The screens are not reflective and even though Audi’s ‘Virtual Cockpit’ has been around for a few years, it seems better laid out in this new car. Sure, the car has not gone down Volvo’s minimalist route, but the screens, those dedicated to the ventilation controls, feel just right. Everything about this new Audi feels like you are controlling a spaceship from a sci-fi but you’re not in a film because you have Johnny Jhakaas cutting across in his motorcycle in front of you. Yet sitting inside this car, you genuinely feel like you have been transported into the future. Sure, we are not flying missions into space every second day and we have not been back to the moon since 1972 but this just feels right. The steering wheel, for example, has one of the coolest designs and a positively nice layout with everything being where it is supposed to be, including the horn.
How does it drive? Well, Audi, burned heavily by the dieselgate fiasco, is only introducing the A6 in India in the 45TFSI garb. It means that it has a 240-horsepower two litre petrol engine, which isn’t a bad thing given that carmakers expect an impending war on diesel. And while the throttle pedal now has a computer between the engine and your right foot, when you press it, this car can move very fast and get to high speeds even faster. There were times I felt that the traction control kicked in a bit too hard, especially around tight turns, but I was driving in urban conditions. This makes the close to nine kilometers a litre real-world fuel economy figures I got quite impressive indeed. Ride and handling were excellent, although I must add the caveat that I only sat in front while on the move, because this car really feels better behind the, and I repeat, very nice steering wheel. That said, when I did sit at the back, you realise that the eighth-generation A6 feels almost as large inside as a slightly older A8.
So would I buy one? If I was driving myself, almost certainly even though the fully-loaded ‘Technology Edition’ I was driving costs five lakhs more than the standard one. But the technology is worth it if are not being driven around. Sure, some features like the lane-assist have to be disabled in city conditions, although it is useful on the highway and you miss a heads-up display, which would have really been icing on the cake, but this package is a really nice one and the latest A6 is a car I can imagine driving for days on end.
