Audi A6 Avant

Audi's largest and flashest combustion-engined estate model renews its battle with the BMW 5 Series Touring On sale Now Price from £52,510

- WILL NIGHTINGALE [e-mail]

FADS AND FASHIONS often come and go – so could the popularity of SUVs be due a downturn? It's certainly reached saturation point, with only two out of the UK's top 10 best-selling models so far this year being a different bodystyle.

Regardless, if you don't just want to follow the herd and buy a pseudo off-roader like most of your neighbours, an estate could be an equally practical and far less ubiquitous answer – and the new A6 Avant is the biggest in Audi's line-up, sitting above the A5 Avant. Confusingly, there's also an A6 Avant e-tron, which is similar in size but is an entirely unrelated fully electric car that went on sale earlier this year.

The regular A6 Avant we're focusing on here is available with a petrol or diesel engine, and its closest rivals are the BMW 5 Series Touring and Mercedes-Benz E-Class Estate.

WHAT'S IT LIKE TO DRIVE?

The line-up is pretty simple at the moment, because there's just one petrol and one diesel engine to choose between. Each has a capacity of 2.0 litres and a power output of 201bhp, although there are some key differences beyond the colour of the nozzle you need to grab when filling the fuel tank.

For starters, the diesel (badged TDI) has mild hybrid electrical assistance. Usually with this sort of technology, there's a very small battery that provides a tiny amount of assistance when you're pulling away. Here, though, the battery is a respectable size (1.7kWh) and gives enough oomph to drive the car along on its own for a very short time at low speeds. This brings impressive fuel economy benefits (more on which later) but also boosts performance.