Audi A4

Audi has at last found the ignition switch in Australia, and while it won't overtake BMW or Benz next week, there's a real possibility that one day it might.
In August the A4 passed BMW's 3 Series in the monthly score sheets. That's like Mark Webber winning a GP - not an impossible feat, but one you'd only back at moonshot odds.
Dressed in a tighter-fitting suit, the A4 has at last acquired that elusive but essential ingredient to inflict serious damage in this class: desirability.
The equally sharp Avant wagon is now here. Base models are rolling out first: the 118kW 1.8 direct injection turbo petrol, at $56,400, and the 105kW 2.0 turbodiesel, at $57,800. Both are standard with the Multitronic CVT whizzer spinning the front wheels.
Neither will rip your arms off, but once you discover a CVT 'box requires a busy right foot to get a full quota of Watts and Newtons, performance climbs to respectable. Both are at the front end of low emissions engineering as well.
Front-drive Audis used to handle and steer like garbage trucks, but they've moved a few bits around so the A4's better balanced than before. It's also low-fat, which never hurts when there's a corner coming up.
Audi's dial-a-drive system allows you to fiddle with the suspension and performance maps. Mark this as a new low-cost/high-margin options earner that several makers are using, i.e. we have the technology, it's cheap and you'll see a lot more of it. It can be effective, but in a mid-size front driver? Nah. Trouser the $3200; the standard suspension is fine.
You get core Audi attributes in the Avant - no-hinge body, the tidiest cabin going and an endless options list - plus more passenger and load space. As is usually the case with Audi, the gun drives in the A4 Avant lineup will be the Quattros, which begin arriving soon. The new 155kW 2.0-litre petrol/seven-speed twin clutch box version, which lobs in mid-2009, should be a sweet thing.