SA Road Tests

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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
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*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.


We try the 2012 Audi Q3 2,0 TFSi (155 kW) S-tronic, Quattro

Sporty lifestyle crossover

Published in The Witness Motoring on Wednesday July 11, 2012

Audi’s mid-size Q5 and full-size Q7 SUVs are pitched as practical family machines with off-road credibility, while the new-to-SA Q3 is offered as a sporty crossover for the lifestyle market. Its primary perceived competitor is BMW’s X1. Those for whom pedigree is important, might like to know that this little SUV is built on the Golf 5/Tiguan platform in the SEAT plant at Martorell, near Barcelona, Spain.

Five models, sharing two basic 2,0-litre engines and offering limited choices between manual or S-tronic transmissions and front wheel drive or Quattro, are on offer here. We tried the 2,0-litre turbopetrol four-cylinder that develops 155 kW of power, has Quattro full-time all-wheel drive and puts it all down to earth via a seven-speed S-tronic transmission.
There is no low range transfer case or optional elevated riding height, nor can any differentials be locked, so one would probably not take one’s Q3 on extreme adventures.

There would be no driving in the footprints of that chap on TV or following the rugged, bearded fellow who drives Land Rovers around Africa, for instance. Where it can take you is through some pretty slushy, loose or mildly rocky trails you definitely would not tackle in your streetcar. In other words, it meets the needs of the majority of weekend warriors.

In the interests of Science, you understand, we took it along our favourite local forestry trail with its minor washaways and loose shale. We listened carefully as each wheel sought and found grip, held on as it bucked gently, and quietly ambled through in automatic. There were no moments of concern or sounds of scraping, so it did its job well. On one of our standard provincial dirt roads with potholes and washboard corrugations, it was comfortable and stable at practical and legal speeds.

All this is very well, but the Q3’s regular habitat would be city streets and highways, moving families about their daily business and going to fun destinations for weekends away. In this respect it is pure Audi. Despite being described as a mini SUV, a fraction under 4,4 metres long, it has a decent boot measuring 460 litres with rear seatbacks up and 1365 with them folded. Occupants of that seat will find themselves pretty comfortable, with its SA Standard Tall Passenger ratings of 9/10 each for headroom and feet and a full ten for knee room. As we noted after driving its prime competitor a while ago, if a so-called mini SUV is this spacious, do you actually need one that’s the size of a small house?

It is built strongly but lightly, with high-strength steels for the critical parts and aluminium panels for unstressed items like bonnet and wraparound tailgate. The lightest fwd version weighs in at 1445 kilograms, with the body shell accounting for only 301 of them. As a result, on-road performance is decently brisk with the 155 kW version sprinting up to 100 km/h in a whisker under seven seconds and going on to a maximum of 230 km/h.

The inside ambience is very Audi with a rather formal atmosphere, mostly black with a few metallic highlights, well fitted and looking suitably opulent. We especially approved of the optional sports seats fitted to our test car, with their under-thigh extensions and wraparound embrace. All front seats without purely competitive aspirations should be like this. It’s such a pity it takes a R6000 premium to get them, unfortunately.

There is nothing new to say about the seven-speed S-tronic gearbox, however. It’s smooth, it kicks down promptly, it doesn’t hunt, it has a Sport setting for when your inner naughty teenager kicks in, there is the option of manual override in the Drive position and there are paddles for temporary downshifts. The only automatics marginally better are decent DSGs or, rare beasts, excellent CVTs.

The Q3 might not be your ultimate rock climber and gully rider, but for sane and normal camping, fishing and trail driving activities, it looks hard to beat.

The numbers
Basic price: R467 000
Price as tested: R503 990 – 18” alloy wheels, MMI 3G satnav, front sports seats with electric lumbar support.
Engine: 1984 cc, four-cylinder, turbocharged petrol
Power: 155 kW between 5000 and 6200 rpm
Torque: 300 Nm between 1800 and 4900 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 6,9 seconds
Maximum speed: 230 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 10,5 l/100 km
Tank: 64 litres
Warranty: 1 year, unlimited distance
Maintenance plan: 5 years/100 000 km

We drove a 2015 version with 132 kW engine here

What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.

What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so I do actually exist.

I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!

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