There's another reason to give the Audi A3 hatch more than a moment of your precious time. It's the first vehicle to be built on the Volkswagen Group's new transverse-engine architecture, known as MQB. This kit of parts -- too wide-ranging to be called a platform -- will underpin everything from subcompacts to compacts to crossovers, coupes and roadsters, right up to midsize sedans.
For Audi that means not just the A3 as hatchback, sedan, and cabrio, but the next-generation A1 subcompact, which is expected to come to the U.S. Plus the next TT, due two years from now, and the next Q3 (even though the current Q3 has yet to be launched in the States).
For Volkswagen, MQB will underpin the vast majority of its cars, from the next Golf (due this year) to a crossover to be built in the U.S. Further out, it will also form the basis for the new Beetle, Jetta, and Passat (the Euro and the U.S./China versions), plus the little Polo. And there will be new niche products such as the Bulli microvan. It's an immensely flexible architecture, and by 2018, the automaker plans on building about 10 million MQB cars per year. So it had better be right.A first drive in the Euro-market 2013 Audi A3 hatch confirms the potential. Because it's the VW Group's mainstream luxury brand, Audi was able to reinvest the immense purchasing savings of the MQB into the substance of the car.
The new A3's interior craftsmanship is on par with or better than any other vehicle in its class. Audi threw big bucks at this cabin: the plastics and leathers have a soft touch, it's bejeweled with machined aluminum touch points, the switches glide with micro-managed precision, and the night-time illumination is worthy of Hollywood lighting. It all fits together with obsessive accuracy.
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