Audi A6 Avant
New from £51,150
Is the Audi A6 Avant Estate a good car?
Read our expert review
Words by: Mark Nichol
"Audi had a little look around recently and thought “hmm, most cars are big SUVs now, including ours.” So, instead of making the 2025 version of its biggest estate car, the A6, even more massive, it made it more “lifestyle”. Lifestyle, of course, is a euphemism for “smaller”; the boot is littler than the last A6 Avant's, which is weird. Estates are called “load luggers” for a reason, though, so it might bother some people that this sacrifice has been made. It's quantifiably less practical than the Mercedes-Benz E-Class Estate and the BMW 5 Series Touring now. Still, the A6 Avant remains fundamentally a very large and fancy family wagon, with a wonderful, high-tech and high-quality interior, half-decent running costs (there's an actual diesel ... in 2025), and styling that makes it so much more interesting than the average big SUV."
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Running costs for a Audi A6 Avant
3/5
Just two engine choices at launch, comprising a not-very-powerful petrol engine and… get this… a diesel. But it’s a sensible move, because you can say “sporting emotional lifestyle vehicle” as many times as you like, but the fact remains that these cars are used by people who routinely and mundanely carry a lot of stuff and/or people over long distances. Diesel still works best for that. The diesel is a mild hybrid, but a super-duper type that Audi calls ‘MHEV Plus’ because it allows a bit of electric-only driving at low speeds, more like a proper hybrid. The result is improved efficiency although, because this review is based on an early drive of the car, we have no official numbers at the time of writing. Our car managed around 50mpg. Not bad for something this big and fancy. You’ll get 40mpg from the 2.0-litre petrol if you're lucky. In every other way this is a ‘premium’ car with a high list price, and costly insurance and maintenance. Audi will soon make it much more tax-efficient by releasing a couple of plug-in hybrids, though. It’ll definitely be worth waiting for those (early 2026, probably) if you're a company car lad or ladette.
Reliability of a Audi A6 Avant
4/5
If cabin quality were a true indicator of reliability, this would be a cast-iron choice. The calibre of the materials from top to bottom is genuinely stunning. Audi has this stuff nailed now. Of course, it’s not a guarantee, but we expect the new A6 to perform very well indeed, mainly because most of the A6’s ingredients are updated parts, rather than brand new. OK, this A6 Avant is a new model, but its chassis, engines, gearboxes and electrics are all developments or updates of parts used in loads of other Audis. The company’s standard three-year, 60,000-mile warranty is on the short side, though.
Safety for a Audi A6 Avant
5/5
This is the sort of thing you’d naturally call “a big, safe car” because the sheer bulk of thing gives it that feeling. It’s not been filled with dummies and smacked into things by Euro NCAP yet, but when it is, we’re certain it’ll receive a five-star safety score. You of course get the usual mandated safety stuff that pushes the car into lane, brakes for you if you're too slow or distracted to do it yourself, and BONGS at you if you're too naughty to stick to the speed limit. But on top of that, the Matrix LED headlamps offer cutting-edge brightness, the rear lights are 'active' so they can adopt a warning pattern of someone's tailgating you, and surround view parking cameras are standard. The only slight vexation – and it's always this way with the fancy German brands – is that some active safety kit is optional or high spec only, side assist with exit warning being one example. It doesn't make the car fundamentally less safe, but worth mentioning.
How comfortable is the Audi A6 Avant
4/5
Because the A6 has one of the most adjustable, most ergonomically exquisite driving positions in the entire pantheon of driving positions, it’s very comfy. Audi always gets this stuff right. As usual, though, Audi has made some element of comfort an optional extra by charging for adaptive damping. The normal suspension is a little on the firm side (albeit fine), but the adaptive suspension option in ‘Comfort’ setting really takes things up a notch, making the car feel smoother than that time Carlos Santana featured Rob Thomas. Audi is open about having designed the A6 Avant “not as a limo”, so the A6 has quite a low, sloping roof, which eats into both rear headroom and boot space. It’s down to 503 litres from 565 in the last A6 Avant. That said, the wheelbase is longer, so rear legroom is good, and headroom is fine, more than enough for the kids.
Features of the Audi A6 Avant
5/5
It’s fair to call the A6 Avant “feature rich” and, unlike a lot of Audis of yore, this one has been designed to look cracking as a base model (Sport spec) car, and have LOADS of stuff as standard; S line trim is a nice now, rather than a necessity. If you do choose S line, though, it’s the standard ‘bigger wheels plus lower and stiffer suspension’ sort of thing. Which degrades comfort but upgrades style. All versions get super-duper digital lights front and back, which let you choose between a handful of ‘signatures' so you can pick the pattern you want them to have. Twin-tone leather wrapping for the (heated) seats and the dashboard, four-zone climate control and heated sports seats, surround view parking cameras, a massive ‘free-floating’ screen that’s split into two for instruments and infotainment ... all standard fit. The software is brilliantly intuitive too, partly because it's designed cleverly, but more basically because the screens are so massive there’s room for almost every function you need. Plus the voice recognition is superb. The optional third dashboard is cool too, giving the front passenger their own access to the navigation, stereo, Netflix, YouTube... all kinds of stuff. It becomes 'invisible' to the driver once a video begins playing, too. Very clever. You do wonder whether all these screens will really date the car in future, though. Although that's the same basic argument as "those tattoos will look terrible when you're older." Right here, right now, they look great.
Power for a Audi A6 Avant
4/5
On paper the launch engines for the A6 Avant are a bit disappointing, to be honest. One petrol and one diesel, neither of them especially powerful or exciting. But, as we’ve already discussed, they do keep costs reasonable, and in fact they’re both quite remarkable engineering achievements. Remember when diesel engines used to rattle and chug like rented campsite generators? Not this one. It’s positively silky, and it's matched to a gearbox that so quickly and imperceptibly changes gears that you’ll forget the car even has a gearbox; the seven-speed automatic is standard with both engines, your only option. The petrol engine is quieter still, but actually a little less suited to the car because it needs to be worked harder than the diesel. At some point we’ll get a couple of plug-in hybrids, one of them with 350 horsepower, and proper S and RS high-performance models, which will give the A6 the power it deserves. But for now, it’s probably sensible that Audi has led with engines that just do the job, calmly and effectively, if a little mundanely.
Lease deals
These deals are based on terms of 8,000 miles, for a 36 month lease with a 6 months initial payment.
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Standard equipment
Expect the following equipment on your Audi A6 Avant Estate. This may vary between trim levels.
Other vehicles in the A6 Avant family
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