New Audi Q3 takes on BMW X1 and Mercedes GLA

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the Q3 to Audi. When the Audi Q3 is firing on all four cylinders, Audi’s operations look peachy. When it isn’t, oh, that’s trouble.

How the Q3 made Audi India

Let me take you back to 2010. The BMW X1 had given birth to the compact luxury SUV category and for the next two years had a free run, taking BMW to the number one spot in India. That lasted until 2012 when Audi, riding a wave of Bollywood and cricket popularity for the Audi Q7, brought in the baby Q.

Q3 volumes immediately took Audi to the number one position in late 2012 and in 2013 Audi became the first luxury car brand in India to cross the 10,000-unit mark. A year later Audi brought in the Q3 S with front-wheel drive and a manual gearbox. Priced at ₹24.99 lakh, it was the cheapest Audi you could buy and helped the brand retain the top spot, edging out Mercedes. In 2015 Audi hit their historic peak of 11,192 units and in all those years the Q3 was their best seller.

Then started the well-documented sales collapse for Audi. In 2018 came the second-gen Q3, which Audi, inexplicably, didn’t bring to India. And that is one of the reasons why Audi slid from their all-time high to 6463 units in 2018 and 1693 in 2020.

So what happened in 2020?

Dieselgate meant Audi and the entire VW group in India abandoned diesel. And to plug the hole left by the Q3’s departure Audi brought in the Q2. It was a CBU priced at ₹50 lakh and was based on the same platform as the VW T-Roc, which was also a CBU and was half the price.

The Q2 bombed terrifically and Audi got down to repairing their India business. In 2022, the second-gen Q3 came to India and sales immediately spiked upwards. In 2023 the Q3 Sportback came and Audi hit sales of 7931 units. But the Q3 was fighting a lone battle in a portfolio that was ageing.

Audi India’s biggest product offensive

All changes now. Audi India is on the cusp of an unprecedented product revival. Three new cars are confirmed and that’s not including limited-run cars via the India-EU FTA. The Audi Q9 is confirmed for next year. It’s obvious the new Q7 is incoming. When to get the Q5 is being debated, but that too will come. There are so many new cars available for Audi India to pick from that they have to be careful not to overdo it, which brings the problem of where to slot in the A5. Then there’s electrics. The Q6 e-tron has been threatening to arrive for the past two years but that is dependent on the Skoda-VW Group finalising local production of EVs. It’s a lavish buffet table of new cars and SUVs, and amongst that the most important – particularly in meeting Audi India’s target of doubling market share over the next three to five years – is the Q3. The bread and butter. Plus a bit of jam.

With the third-gen Q3 Audi India have finally moved to the new interior architecture

Audi Q3 interior: new architecture, fewer buttons

Step inside and if you are familiar with the Q3, or any other Audi for that matter, the first thing you will notice is that the gear lever has moved from the centre console to a stalk mounted on the steering column. For years we were complaining that Audi interiors – Q8, Q7, A6, A4, Q3 – all look the same, and with the third-gen Q3 Audi India have finally moved to the new interior architecture. Which incidentally happens at the same time as the world is crying out for physical buttons – something that the gen 2 Q3 did so well.

The so-called MMI panoramic display is made up of two individual screens, 12.8 inches for the central infotainment and an 11.9-inch digital cluster. And finally – finally! – Audi gets wireless CarPlay and Android Auto. There is a row of physical switches under the screen for, among others, the drive mode selector but the air-con controls are all on the screen. The temperature slider is a fixed position that doesn’t disappear no matter which menu you are on the screen but you will still have to take your eyes off the road to operate it and if you want to change blower settings that requires you to go into the climate menu. These are things you will grumble about, but you will get used to them.

What you will miss though is that sense of quality that Audi cabins always gave off. Don’t get me wrong, the Q3 is par for the course when you compare it with its rivals, but it no longer sets the benchmark. The tactile feel of metal buttons that go click-clack is gone. The new steering wheel uses touch buttons, no satisfying scroll of a wheel to adjust volume. And there are too many touchpoints where your palms rest against average-feeling plastic.

Slide open the cloth cover on the sunroof – no hard cover any more and you do feel the heat off the mid-afternoon sun – and notice that the roof is both rather small and there’s a black plastic piece splitting it down the middle. No sun blinds for the rear seats either. At least the space liberated by moving the gear selector to the steering column is used for a wireless charger, a physical volume button and two cupholders.

Audi Q3 design and lighting

From the outside the Q3 looks dramatic with the massive octagonal grille flanked by split digital matrix LED headlights. You can change the DRL patterns and there is a host of lighting functionality which is all first in class. At the rear you get an LED light bar and illuminated rings while the kicking under the rear bumper to operate the electric boot release worked surprisingly consistently.

Platform, dimensions and space

This is a whole new generation of the Q3, not a major facelift. From gen 1 to gen 2 the Q3 grew 96mm longer, the wheelbase was stretched by 77mm and width went up by 18mm. The third-gen is based on the MQB-Evo platform shared with the Tiguan, Tayron and Kodiaq – helping the cause of local assembly at the Skoda-VW facility in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (formerly called Aurangabad).

Overall length increases by 49mm to 4.5 metres, which obviously isn’t the longest in a class which is ruled by BMW right now with their long-wheelbase (LWB) X1. Width increases by 10mm, height by 16mm but the wheelbase only stretches by 1mm and you notice it on the inside where the space remains unchanged.

The seats continue to be on rails and you can slide them forwards to liberate more boot space (which has reduced by 42 litres) and even recline the backrest. This is comfortable and spacious enough for what is still a compact luxury SUV but, that said, I have to point out that the LWB BMW X1 has a 119mm longer wheelbase and correspondingly that much more rear seat space (along with a much larger glass roof). If you want to be chauffeured in, the BMW is still the one to look at. To drive though, now that’s where Audi has an ace up its sleeve.

Engine and performance: a Kalashnikov in a knife fight

Pop the bonnet and you will thank Audi for backing away from the downsizing trend. The familiar EA888 4-cylinder 2-litre turbo-petrol is retained and it goes straight to the top of its class as far as petrol engines in this segment are concerned. The X1 makes do with a 156bhp 1.5-litre 3-cylinder that does 0-100kmph in 9.2 seconds while the Mercedes-Benz GLA has an even smaller capacity 1.3-litre turbo-petrol but gets one more cylinder and puts out 161bhp to hit 100kmph in 8.9 seconds. Both the BMW and Mercedes are front-wheel drive only. And to that knife fight Audi brings in a Kalashnikov.

The Q3 makes 14bhp more than before to put out 201bhp while torque remains unchanged at 320Nm. With quattro all-wheel drive it shaves two-tenths of a second off the previous Q3 to hit 100kmph in 7.1 seconds. The reference bears spelling out clearly. The Q3 is 1.8 seconds faster to the benchmark sprint than the GLA and 2.1 seconds faster than the X1. If you are an enthusiast the search for your next compact luxury SUV ends here. Full stop.

Ride and handling

To drive, right from the gen 1 Q3, the baby Q was always fun to drive. Wait, scratch that, it was always excellent to drive and the gen 3 Q3 continues in the same vein. Hit the first pothole – which will happen within the first kilometre of you driving anywhere in India – and you will notice the ride comfort that Audis have always been known for. The Q3 runs 18-inch wheels with a meaty profile and the ride is all the better for it. It goes through ruts, dips, slashes and bumps with excellent composure, doing a game job of keeping occupants unruffled.

Hit the first corner and you will notice body roll – of course you will notice body roll in a car that correctly prioritises ride comfort for India – but you will also notice composure and balance.

The transverse-engined Q3 is natively front-wheel drive with the Haldex clutch sending torque to the rear wheels when it senses slip. The split can be up to 50:50 front to rear and it can happen in milliseconds; the software even reads steering angle and drive select mode to pre-load the rear on turn-in rather than waiting for the front to first lose traction. This is hugely beneficial when attacking a twisty road, especially in the wet, where quattro gives you that sense of safety you don’t get in any of its rivals. Plus you can get on the throttle much earlier which serves to amplify the performance differential.

On the limit it will understeer, as all Audis are wont to do, but until you get to those limits the Q3 delivers safe, secure and confident road manners which have always made the Q3 the dynamic pick of this segment. The only real criticism I can direct towards it is the overly light steering which does make the Q3 a breeze to drive around town, but takes a bit away from the baby-Q7 feel that the Q3 always oozed.

Where the BMW X1 and Mercedes GLA fight back

That said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the Q3’s rivals offer more. The GLA has both petrol and diesel (the latter putting out 188bhp and accelerating to 100kmph in 7.5 seconds thanks to 4Matic). The X1 has a 148bhp diesel in the regular wheelbase, petrol in the long wheelbase and also the incredibly successful electric with the long wheelbase. And the kicker is the ₹50 lakh pricing for the X1 LWB petrol – something the Q3 has to come very close to, if not matching outright.

Verdict

You could say Audi are entering battle with one hand tied behind their back. But Audi are firmly back in the fight. And we all know what happens when the Q3 is firing on all four cylinders.