SA Road Tests

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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. I drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under real-world South African conditions. Most, but not all, the vehicles driven are world cars as well, so what you read here possibly applies to the models you get where you live.

My most recent drive is on the home page. Archived reviews and opinion pieces are in the active menu down the left side. Hover your cursor over a heading or manufacturer's name and follow the drop-down.


Styling and engine changes for 2015 Audi A1 Sportback: We drive the 1.4 T FSI SE S-tronic

The four-door alternative

Posted: 30 June 2015

The cheat sheet
Basic price: R323 500
Engine: 1395 cc, DOHC, 16-valve, four-cylinder turbopetrol
Power: 92 kW at 5000 rpm
Torque: 200 Nm between 1400 and 4000 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 8.8 seconds
Maximum speed: 204 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 6.0 l/100 km
Tank: 45 litres
Luggage: 270 litres seats up – 920 litres seats flat and loaded to roof
Warranty: One year, unlimited distance; with roadside assistance
Maintenance plan: 5 years/100 000 km

Rule One, which many journalists forget, is to put oneself into the mind and wallet of the potential buyer. That means we must remember, first, that this is not your average family car. That’s because the boot is small, rear seat space is limited and its suspension is a little too firm for most people over 40 to live with through three- to six years of payments.

Second, it’s not a purist, personal, pocket rocket either because it has four doors and only moderate power. The real deal would be the three-door version with 141 kilowatt, 1800 cc motor that replaced the old 136 kW twin-charged 1400. Or an S1 Quattro with its 170 kW two-litre; but that’s something else entirely.

But back to what we have: It’s a Sportback so it has four doors (five if you count the hatch as a door). That suggests that you will, at least occasionally, plan to carry a couple of mates in the back provided you are all of “average” height and build; or younger heirs who don’t yet require acres of head- and leg space. Whatever the case, they will at least benefit from 13 mm additional headroom offered by the elongated roof line. If you’re interested, luggage space on both body styles is identical.

That makes it slightly more practical than the three-door car but still compactly sized, fitted with a good selection of standard equipment, strongly built, well-engineered and probably as safe as present day technology can make it. That includes disc brakes at both ends with ABS/EBA/EBD and ESC, electronic limited slip differential, active skid regulation, secondary collision braking assistance, ISOFix and six airbags. That’s two more than in the 136-kW version we drove in 2012.

Other new stuff  includes slight face lifts front and rear, a touch of interior redecorating and a new engine that we first noticed with the February 2013 introduction of Golf 7. The old motor displaced 1390 cc from bore and stroke of 76.5 x 75.6 mm and developed 90 kw/200 Nm. This car uses a 1395 cc motor with dimensions of 74.5 x 80.0 mm and puts out 92 kW with the same 200 Nm of torque, although the rev range has been extended slightly. The previous maximum torque band ran from 1500 – 4000 rpm. It’s now from 1400 to 4000.

You probably won’t feel any performance difference through the seat of your pants, but claimed average fuel economy has improved by about 10 percent from 5.4 l/100 km to 4.9, carbon dioxide emissions dropped from 126 grams per kilometre to 113 (tax free!) and its cleanliness rating is now EU 6 rather than EU 5.

Our real life consumption dropped from about 7.5 l/100, driving an automatic three-door in 2011, to 6.0 in this automatic five-door more recently. We obviously can’t guarantee that driving conditions were identical, four years apart, but the difference is noteworthy nonetheless.

The seven-speed S-Tronic dual clutch gearbox worked well although we did notice an occasional slight hesitation when demanding quick reaction to throttle inputs. We don’t know whether this was related to turbo lag or a gearbox quirk, but pulling the gear stick back to sport mode made the problem disappear. Manual override is by means of the abovementioned stick only – no paddles on this model.

A driving mode selector that offers auto, dynamic and efficiency (eco) settings alters throttle and gearbox reactions quite noticeably, but none of them gets rid of the hesitation mentioned earlier quite as effectively as the sport position did.

Points we liked on this car, apart from performance and responsiveness, were the way the rear seat backs fold completely flat; the nice solid floor board in the boot; the fact that there is an emergency wheel, although runflats can be bought as options; ambidextrous pull downs for the boot lid; front and rear speed defrosters; a proper lift-up handbrake; always being able to see which gear has been selected; the overall standard of fit and finish and front seats that support without being overwhelming.

Less-liked were the cramped and near-vertical back seats; struggling to get back out; a downward-sloping rear bumper that won’t support an armful of cargo while you fumble for the boot catch; the oval inside rearview mirror that doesn’t cover the entire back window and wide C-pillars that small glass inserts don’t quite alleviate. But not everyone cares about details like that. It gets back to putting oneself into the minds of younger potential buyers. And that’s what counts.

Test unit from Audi SA press fleet.

We drove a 2020 model with the new engine, in 2019



What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material. If I ever place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with that vehicle at least once already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.

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 they can see I do actually exist.

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