2.0 TDI SE 150 5dr SUV

A 'Tardis' in reverse! Looks large on the outside, but where is all the usable space inside...?

You could say I used to be a VAG fan....having driven a Touran for 5 years /116K miles, and got the Wife a 4x4 Yeti. But no longer sadly! Imagine my interest when I had the opportunity to get a nice "small but sensible" Audi Q3 company car....! But then...."Ker...plunk"....what a let down, I could just not believe it! £4 grand extra above a VW for less goodies and a 4 circles badge! I really should have known better.
I console myself that I really wanted a Tiguan, but the new Mk2 was being introduced, so none were available at the TCO limit from the company.
So it will be shorter to say what is good about this car.
GOOD: Seats are very comfortable, notably the movable flap just beneath the knees, this was always pushing my legs upwards on the Touran.
There are the usual safety bits and pieces within the car, but these are on nearly all VAG vehicles these days.
As with most VAG engines, the 150ps diesel engine is nice, flexible and gutsy when needed.
BAD: This is a Euro 6 engine, but only so by adding Adblue every 4.5K miles (at £13 for 10 Litres), so if you end up running out of Adblue, after repeated system warnings, the engine will just refuse to start. This is very clever of VAG.....instead of paying emissions-based Road Tax to the Government....you pay VW for the Adblue at £52 year for 18,000 miles!! To be fair, VAG sell the stuff cheaper than Halfords, et al.
The Music system sound is very good, but the software logic, and consul manipulation is appalling, and continues to default settings ate every vehicle start. This drives me to distraction. A year 5 school student doing 'Basic' could do better!
Handling: fairly comfortable actually, but when pushed, the car becomes a bit skippy in the corners and bends, especially if you hit a bump as you are cornering with endeavor.
Fuel economy - I get about the same as the Bluemotion Touran, 49mpg, but the Q3 is significantly lighter, and so should be much better than this.
UGLY: Well, on the outside this looks like a smart medium sized car, with a high driving position. But inside, suddenly one becomes jammed-in with no room for anyone or anything else of real-life size. One glove-box exists(small), no under seat storage - gaps, yes, but nothing to hold / hide stuff from rolling around the floor. Rear leg room for our teenage sons is almost none-existent, until the driver jams themselves into the steering wheel. And as for the boot....wow...the side walls of the vehicle at the boot region are around 35 cms thick on each side, leaving very little usable space for family goings-on. We could not even get all of our weekly family shop into the boot. The rear seats do not fold down.
Now, this was the SE Trim, which is the base level. However Audi seem to have happily stripped out so many 'basics', many of which would be cheap plastic mouldings (such as under-seat drawers), that the car becomes close to a skeleton consisting of just an Audi badge with an engine!
So...the Audi Q3 is definitely not recommended.
Will I venture back to VAG cars again, hmmm, where's that Nissan Brochure....?

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