What's become of the A4 Avant.
“Hey,” you ask between bites of sympathetically foraged nettle
burger, “isn’t this Audi thing just, like, a more-expensive version of
my Subaru Outback?” Well, yeah, sorta.
Like the Subaru, this Audi is based on a no-longer-sold-in-the-U.S.
station wagon (the Legacy five-door and the dead-for-2013 A4 Avant,
respectively.) Like the Subaru, the Allroad is jacked up and
plastic-plated. And like the Subaru, it’s mainly an advertisement for
how green and holistic your lifestyle is.
Audi freely admits the Allroad is not intended for off-road use. It
has no available low-range gearing or height-adjustable suspension, as
did the first Allroad, which was based on the A6. It doesn’t have hill-descent control or a freaking winch or a tranquilizer gun or anything. What it does have are stainless-steel skid plates that would look pretty shitty if they got scratched up.
But in contrast to Subaru’s Montpelier shuttle bus, this Audi is a
far more luxurious and better-fettled machine, like its A4 Avant
forebear. The cabin is as well turned out as you’d expect, a veritable
festival of high-buck materials screwed together with the precision of,
well, an Audi. Leather upholstery is standard, as is trim supposedly
woven from individual strips of stainless steel. Upgrade linings include
open-pore matte walnut and layered oak.