Five times in 11 months, by my reckoning. That’s the number of times I made use of the plastic clad Audi’s ability to hitch up its skirt and tackle unsealed roads. So in pure hard financial term it is simply not worth the 2000 pounds it cost over a stock A6 with the same engine and gearbox (although the price rise accompanying the facelifted A6 range has narrowed the gap). But if you were buying your Audi wagon with your logic hat in you’d actually be buying a Mondeo estate instead. I have always liked the way the A6 looks and I like the Allroad more, especially the showy chrome grille that I had thought looked like an Auto Union racers. Until I realized it looks like a TX4 London cab’s. Thankfully it is slightly less likely to catch fire. In fact nothing much went wrong. A bulb blew, the contacts in the rear lights needed adjustment, the front wheels needed balancing and it needed a liter of oil adding. Even the tyres still had 3mm each on when Audi came to collect it. Not bad for just short of 20,000 miles of hard graft.
Servicing is dependent on use and we managed to go 19,000 before dropping it in to Peterborough Audi. With a horrific 95 plus pounds VAT per hour labor rate it is no wonder the bill came to over 250 pounds for little more than changing the oil. The Allroad became a favorite for Continental holidays, twice taking CAR men to the south of France.
