Audi Allroad 2000 test drive - 2006 SUV

And ours and your

Audi forced all four wheels of its emblem to rotate twenty years ago. Today, the famous rings rolled off the asphalt to the Efficiency in the series, Audi Allroad Quattro went to the series.

In the class of the so -called universals of increased cross -country ability is new. Along the path, or rather, on the off -road, the beaten by Subaru Legacy Outback and Subaru Forester, the Volvo V70 XC is already rolling, the Bavarian motor builders in addition to the X5 managed to work on the project of an all -wheel drive barn based on Rover 75. Finally, the creation of SAAB and even such highways are pinched on the creation of similar machines. Like Porsche and Maserati. But all these are either the events of yesterday, or plans for the future. Today everyone is talking about the new alternate from Audi.
He crouched, squeezed out. This car was waiting for a long time. And when she appeared two years ago as a concept car, many were disappointed: instead of the expected jeep on the catwalk of the Detroit car dealership, there was A6 Avant on large wheels. Audi representatives already had the answer to this: the body, characteristic of most SUVs, cannot provide the dynamics that fans of the Ingolstadt brand are used to, and therefore AlloD is the best compromise between the prestigious sedan and the machine, on which you can go, for example, to hunt
     
So what happened. The body raised markedly, receiving mighty bumpers to the color of the body, ribbed, made of strong metallized plastic protection of the crankcase pallet, mesh intake, thresholds, about which trousers are dirty as in a real SUV, and huge extensors of wheeled arches. Exclusive tires Good Year and Pirelli size 225/55 R17, the central part of which has a low rolling resistance, and the external is highly profiled. The salon is covered with the skin of green or gray. Two V6 engines: 2.7 liter gasoline with a double turbocharged capacity of 250 hp. or a 2.5-liter turbodiesel with a direct injection with a capacity of 180 hp Both motors can be combined either with 6-speed mechanics, or with a 5-speed type-tone.
However, alload is not a big food based on A6 Avant. In addition to the all -wheel drive transmission and the Torsen cross -ose differential, there is a mighty subframe here, on which elements of the main transmission and rear suspension are fixed. The suspension itself is pneumatic, allows you to stepwise change the clearance of the car by as much as 66 mm. It can be controlled both manually and in automatic mode. If the Allroad Quattro moves at a speed of more than 120 km/h, electronic systems that select optimal aerodynamics, press the car to the road. In the parking lot, the body is always squeezed to the maximum for the convenience of planting and ease. Interestingly, the Range Rover New or Lexus LX 470, in which a similar system is installed, is squatted on the parking lot.
Of course, a high clearance is needed not only in the parking lot. If the ALLROAD Quattro road clearance of 142 mm rushing along the Autoban, then the car body can be squeezed up to 208 mm on the laundry. And this is already very serious. Neither Volvo, nor Subaru, nor BMW, nor even Jeep Cherokee can boast such a clearance. Plus, the reducing series of transmission, which is equipped with versions with mechanics, which allows not only to feel confident on impassability, but also to tow a load weighing up to 2300 kg. The reduction effect can be illustrated as follows: in 1st gear at 1000 rpm. The car will move at a speed of 7.9 km/h, but it is worth pressing the button on the gearbox switching handle, and the speed will be only 4.9 km/h. It is curious that if the forgetful driver begins to light up at a reduced one at a speed of more than 50 km/h, the on -board computer will be boring to mutterly: Low Range, Low Range, and at 70 km/h, the electronic speed tie will simply turn on.
Ski season. But all this, as they say, theory. For practical classes, Audi specialists chose a high mountain in the vicinity of the Austrian city of Shladming, along the slopes of which a narrow primer looped. The electronic traction control system, which includes a bouquet from ABS, Edl and ASR, perfectly copes with its task: when necessary, the wheels turn, throwing small pebbles to the sides, and the car itself rolls in a grap, as in rails.
Although, in principle, on such a highway, maybe not at such a speed, a front -wheel drive product of the Volga Automobile Plant would certainly have traveled. Therefore, closer to the top, we turn off the beaten road to a barely noticeable path, which rests on the still not melted ski route. We decide to go up so that, stuck, you could go back.
The car climbed along the snowy slope for a couple of tens of meters until it stopped, pressing an impressive snowdrift in front of me. Turning around, we easily moved down, but, having slipped through the inertia, our former dry path, streams struck the soil for twenty centimeters in the hogging zone, and our Audi immediately drowned almost along the rim.
Until recently, it was crowded here the wheels erupted from under the snow two shilling coins and a bottle of digestive Balm Underberg. But today the ski season is over, the other Alload was noisy with motors somewhere far below, if something would have to push. On the version with the automatic transmission, and we had just such, the reducing transmission was not provided. In addition, Pirelli Cinturato P6 Allroad, albeit good rubber, but still not Mickey Thompson.
The fears were in vain: slowly, with a axle box, but rightly, AlloDo pushed a fifty -meter track and jumped onto dry soil. Our skepticism relatively bold assurances of the concern managers about the hunting purpose of the car decreased. After that we climbed a little along the steep slopes, fearing to catch on the bottom of the stone, but the clearance of 21 cm with a wheelbase of 276 cm allowed to leave the underbelly car untouched. The only thing that delivered the trouble was that at the entrance to the crest of the hill I had to get out of the car and see what was ahead: a hole, a boulder or a stump. If the driver’s landing is more vertical in the average jeep, then in AlloD, the hood is hidden upwards not only the road in front of the Polnob.
Swift barn. At a press conference in Shrading, where the Audi leadership was asked a direct question of whom they consider the main competitors of their new items, the answer was equally direct: BMW X5 and Mercedes M-Klasse. Both cars are known to be manufactured in the USA and oriented mainly on the American market. Most likely, it was there that the marketing arrows of the company from Ingolstadt are aimed, not without reason the English -speaking Allroad was added to the traditionally Latin Audi and Quattro.
At the same time, the company connects certain hopes with the Russian market official sales in Russia will begin on June 17, and by the end of the year, Audi plans to sell a couple of dozen cars from us. It is difficult to say whether any of the domestic buyers will use Alload as extensive as the authors of the project imagine. In Russia, Audi A6 is bought mainly as a representative car, and the barn for this role will hardly fit. As for hunting, it is in Germany that the hunter reaches a yagdhouse, puts on a hat with a pen and goes to the forest on foot, everything can end with a cable attached to the Belarus tractor.
However, the Allroad Quattro has two important advantages. The first Russian price of the car will start from $ 53 thousand, which is only $ 10 thousand more than they ask for A6 AVANT today in a similar configuration. And skeptics, who believed that for the price that Audi will appoint for its permissive, you can buy two cars a representative sedan and a jeep, can now put your skepticism in a exhaust pipe: you can’t even buy a decent South Korean couple for the above amount. And the second: in Russia there are a lot of people who are able to buy a car for only four woven rings on a radiator grille.
Text and photo Dmitry Gronsky, Alexander Fedorov
 
 
 
 
 

A source: "Autopilot"