Audi has gone back to the drawing board for its new A6 luxury sedan, but this time instead of starting with a clean sheet of paper, they've dipped into the filing cabinet for the larger A8 limousine.
From its intricately bejewelled headlights to the rake of its profile, the new A6 looks like a shrunken-down A8. It even gets the A8's hand-me-down technology, bringing the mid-size A6 up to a similar level of technology-laden trinkets to match its main rivals.
The seventh generation of Audi's mid-sizer has grown longer and wider than its ageing replacement, but now sits lower and up to a substantial 80kg lighter than the model it supersedes.
Audi has carried the traditional single-frame grille across to the new model, making it look large and loud on the A6. Big air dams either side and bold strakes along the bonnet give it a strong, masculine stance.
However, a lot of that look comes down to the A6's LED-laced headlights, which this time around run the LEDs in a jagged strip along the bottom of the xenon headlights. Once again, you're going to know exactly what's behind you thanks to their unique signature.
From the bonnet back, the new A6 adopts a more conservative approach, maintaining Audi's traditional two-thirds body to one-third glass ratio. It blends into a rear end with not much deviation from the norm, although the LED tail-lights form an interesting low, wide dish effect.
If the exterior raises an eyebrow, opening the door to the driver's seat will send the other one up to join it. When the most recent A8 launched, Audi was pretty close to the pinnacle of interior design. If anything, the A6's interior is a step above the A8.
The dash steps up in front of the windscreen to create a Passat-style sweeping arc in front of the driver that keeps level with the doors. Inlaid through it is a wide band of wood trim that also wraps around into the doors, ending in a soft-edged teardrop.
This time around, everything on the dash aside from the handle for the rather small glovebox is angled towards the steering wheel, giving the impression the A6 is all for the driver.
There's a smattering of hard plastics around the cabin, but they have a nice, satin finish that doesn't detract from the overall look. Leather-textured soft-touch plastic also covers the transmission tunnel below the centre console's bin, but again, you'd hardly notice.
Audi kitted the press cars with most available options to give the world media a taste of the driver assistance technology launching with the car, so our first view of the A6 is one of a mass of buttons.
The dash is one area where Audi has gone a step too far. The amount of information available to the driver scattered around and in between the speedometer and tacho is bordering on sensory overload.
Sure the computer-game quality graphics look slick, and it all smacks of luxury car feel, but at times there's so much information on display that finding the outside temperature reading or trying to see which gear the automatic gearbox has selected can become a distraction.
The leather seats on our test cars are deep and comfortable, if not a little narrow across the sqwab, and feature a manually adjustable headrest that moves up and forward to minimise whiplash in a crash.
The back seat is roomy and comfortable, although the middle rear is compromised by a rather firm bench and a wide transmission tunnel running through the centre of the car.
Surprisingly, the A6 dispenses with pockets on the front seatbacks, and instead uses cargo nets, which tends to cheapen the experience a bit. However despite that, there's plenty of small item storage under the centre armrest in the rear, door pockets capable of stowing a drink container, and two LED reading lights.
A 530-litre boot provides plenty of cargo space, and it's possible to place a pair of suitcases side-by-side in the wide, shallow slot. Split-fold rear seats and a lockable ski port add versatility.
There's keyless entry for all the A6 models on the test fleet, and with a push of the start button the engine fires into life and the busy dash lights up. It's then just a matter of releasing the automatic handbrake, select a gear from the nicely contoured shifter - this is one area where Audi elected to not copy the A8's yacht-style shifter and stuck with a more conventional design - and press the throttle.
We drove the three engines that will be available in Australia - the 150kW/400Nm 3.0-litre turbo diesel V6, and the 150kW/280Nm 2.8-litre and supercharged 200kW/440Nm 3.0-litre petrol V6s.
However, the two lower-specification cars were fitted with Audi's Multitronic stepless continually variable transmission, front-wheel drive and air suspension when our initial batch of cars will feature the S-tronic seven-speed dual-clutch auto and the base steel spring suspension.
The 2.8-litre provides adequate performance around our loop of the Sicilian hinterlands, maintaining its composure at revs even with the CVT transmission that holds the engine in its performance band with almost regular monotony. However, it never really sparkles.
The diesel seems a better match to the A6's lazy, luxurious feel, providing a deep well of overtaking power on the freeway, and showing little sign of turbo lag from a standing start, but still remaining tractable enough around slower sections through traffic-clogged towns. It was the only car we drove on test to not dip into double figures for fuel economy, which is a surprise given the challenging terrain of the test loops.
The supercharged V6 is the closest we come to driving an Australian-specification car. The engine is a spirited unit, pulling well from low revs and providing an inspiring, if not muted, soundtrack of induction and a little bit of supercharger whine as an accompaniment.
On the move, the seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox is a good match to the engine's performance aspirations, providing lightning-fast gearchanges, and intelligently holding onto gears on downhill runs. It still has the low-speed quirks that result in the driveline feeling loose and uncomfortable as the system struggles with finesse.
All these engines also include Audi's stop-start system that will switch off the engine while the A6 is caught in traffic. It works well and is almost seamless in its ability to fire up the engine, but quick movements from the brake pedal to the throttle can catch it half-asleep.
The only let-down for all the vehicles we drove was the air suspension system, which will be relegated to the options list for Australian buyers.
Sicily uses coarse-chip surfaces over some sections of road subject to snow and ice, and sections in between were pockmarked and uneven.
The air suspension on all three cars never felt comfortable in these conditions, becoming easily unsettled and slow to recover from the numerous small hits from the uneven surfaces. If anything, it was always too firm and busy, with no happy medium from the variable settings.
Over the coarser chip surfaces, the air suspension also built up a resonance that echoed throughout the vehicle and drowned out the engine noise.
Grip, too, from the all-wheel-drive system lacked confidence. The 2.8-litre petrol car and the 3.0-litre diesel struggled to find traction from their 18-inch alloys (our version of the 2.8 will get 16-inch alloys by default and the diesel 17s) clad in Goodyear low-rolling resistance tyres, pushing the nose predictably wide in the wet, treacherous conditions as the A6 slid into understeer.
The 20-inch Pirellis on the supercharged V6 performed better, but the lack of steering feel from the A6's electromechanical steering only made the experience feel all the more remote.
To test the base steel-spring suspension set-up, we had to step down to a lower-spec 2.0 TDI, equipped with a 130kW 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo diesel engine but missing all-wheel-drive and featuring a six-speed manual transmission.
Driving part of the same route as the previous day, the conventionally sprung car is completely different to its air-suspended cousins.
It's sitting on the same 18-inch wheels - and again we're dealing with the low-rolling resistance tyres --as the 3.0-litre V6 diesel and the 2.7-litre petrol, but the ride has calmed down considerably. There's none of the high-speed fussiness of the air suspension, with the steel springs producing a much quieter ride as well.
Audi is yet to say if the front-paw 2.0-litre diesel is to make it to the Australian market, but it drives commendably well, although the engine's 380Nm is more than enough to throw a hint of torque steer into the mix.
However, it is quite predictable when it surfaces, and once it does the A6's traction control system jumps in before things start to get out of hand.
The A6, then, will struggle to sell itself on dynamics, but it does have a luxury-car feel that makes it stand out from rivals including the sharper-steering BMW 5-Series and Mercedes-Benz E-Class, and the ageing Lexus GS.
However, the A6 may throw up its own unique problems for Audi. In a lot of respects the A6 feels like a shrunken-down Audi A8, providing much of the same experience as the larger luxury limousine but at much less cost. It will have A8 owners sneering in contempt every time they see one on the road.
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