• Price£22,590-£30,290
• We like...Classy cabin
• We don't...Pattery ride

Audi’s on a roll. The company saw 100,000 UK new-car customers last year, which is a record. It’s hard, though, to figure exactly what makes owners love the brand so much because there’s no one thing that jumps at you. BMWs are fantastic to drive, Mercs are super-smooth and quiet, but Audis just do pretty much everything well.

So it is with the latest A4 saloon. There’s nothing we found about it that had us punching the air. It is just, well... very, very pleasant. This Audi’s all-new but it resembles the previous one closely, although there’s a strong family look taken from the A5 coupe. It’s bigger now – the same size as the next model up in the range, the A6, once was. This adds cabin space, especially for those sat in the rear, and the boot gains some inches, too.

No rival does cabins as well as Audi and the A4’s nudges the quality still higher. It looks and feels as cool and clean as you’d want and, for a few hundred quid extra, you can even have walnut, ash or nutmeg woody bits on the dash and doors. Mind you, the textured aluminium that comes as standard looks superb. There’s everything you’d expect to find fitted as standard on the SE models, which are the only flavour of A4 available just now. There’s a near-endless list of extras and it’s easy to get carried away. One of the 2.0 TDi cars we drove had over £8k’s worth of options aboard, pushing the price to a giddy £32k. It had a leather interior, sat-nav and fancy star-alloy wheels, but didn’t appear over-loaded with kit. The word is that such money is lost, however, come trade-in time, because the second-hand price will be based on a standard model.

And to drive? We tried the 2.0 and 3.0 diesels with manual six-speed gearshifts and the 2.7 diesel continuously variable auto transmission. These are the options available now; petrols and further diesel choices will reach dealers later in the year. From these the 2.7 auto is the pick if your budget runs to the £28,440 it costs in SE trim. It’s near-silent and wafts along but will also really shift, pulling hard without fuss. You can leave the transmission in auto, or else nudge manually between eight ‘gears’. Its 186bhp feels right, while its 42.8mpg average and 176g/km CO2 emissions flatter a big, quick car.

This A4 rode serenely, though there’s a patter over broken surfaces we’d blame on the optional 18in wheels and skinny-sided tyres fitted. The steering weights up quickly through curves but not as evenly as you’d expect but otherwise it is easy to place the car where you want it.

The 2.0 TDi is the engine Audi expects to power most A4s. Its 144g/km CO2 emissions and 51.4mpg overall average makes it the sensible choice. Sensible here isn’t boring, though: it has plenty of life and, while it isn’t quite as quiet as the others, it’s no rattler.

At the other end of the range, the 3.0 TDi links to the make’s famed quattro all-wheel-drive system to deliver the kind of easy thrust that only a big diesel can muster. This car also has a gizmo that tailors the suspension and throttle responses to ‘comfort’, ‘sport’ or ‘auto’ (where the car ‘learns’ your driving style and adapts to it). We tried it only briefly and couldn’t feel much difference whichever setting we used: a touch firmer and zippier in ‘sport’, perhaps, but no more.
All A4s have button operated auto handbrakes plus hill-holder, to prevent the car slipping on an incline. These work well but we see no advantage over a lever-and-button. Ditto the keyless fob, which slips into a recess within the dash. You press it to start, press again to stop.

Later in the year, the A4 line-up will also span standard and S-line (performance) variants, and a choice of petrol motors, too. An estate model, the Avant, will also be here, given time.

We like the A4. It mayn’t be as sharp as a BMW or as restful as a Merc but it is supremely competent. If neither of its rivals quite fits the ticket, it’s the one to take.

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