Audi A3 1.6TDI announced

Not quite ‘Yet another new Audi’ – but a new engine for the A3.

Audi has announced that they are introducing a new 1.6 litre common rail diesel engine across the A3 range, which will oust the old A3 1.9TDIe and the A3 and Cabriolet 1.9 TDI.

The new engine offers the same 104bhp as the old 1.9 litre unit, but manages to improve economy by over 8% to 68.9mpg and cuts CO2 to 109g/km. The new A3 gets stop-start and energy regeneration to achieve the same performance and power from the smaller engine. O-6omph comes in at 11.4 seconds (12.2 seconds on the Cabriolet, which is also a bit less frugal at 65.7mpg).

The stop-start system on the new Audi A3 1.6TDI cuts out the engine at idle when the clutch is depressed and neutral selected, but restarts in just 0.2 seconds when the clutch is depressed again. This obviously aids economy, but also impacts CO2 emissions by around 5g/km. But you can turn it off if you find it irritating.

The energy recuperation works by storing kinetic energy produced under braking and stores it in the battery. This is then used to aid acceleration and can, on its own, improve economy by 3%.

What’s actually impressive is that these savings have been achieved without any detriment to the headline economy and CO2 figures. But it would be interesting to see what the figures are like in comparison to the old 1.9 litre if the A3 is pushed.

The new A3 1.6 TDI is avialble now. The A3 1.6TDI 3 door starts at £17,485; the A3 1.6 TDI Sportback at £18,025 and the A3 1.6TDI Cabriolet at £20,645