Audi A1 review:
1.4 TFSI 185PS S line S tronic Three-Door

by David Finlay (18 January 2012)

The hottest of the Audi A1s currently available is the most recently-launched member of a quartet of Volkswagen Group hot hatchbacks which also includes the SEAT Ibiza Cupra, Skoda Fabia vRS and VW Polo GTI. They're very closely related, not least in the fact that they share the same turbocharged 1.4-litre petrol engine and seven-speed twin-clutch semi-automatic gearbox, called S tronic by Audi and DSG by everyone else.

There's not a lot to choose between the SEAT, the Skoda and the Volkswagen. None of them is the best hot hatch currently on the market, because this is, but they're all perfectly worthy. It would be easy to assume that the equivalent A1 is basically the same, differing only in its looks and the fact that it costs more.

Well, just you hold on a minute there. Yes, this is the most expensive of the bunch (of course it is - it's an Audi, and Audis never cost a penny less than the company thinks it can get away with), but considering the similarities with its Group siblings it actually feels quite different. And, to get this out of the way now, I believe it's the least impressive of them all.

The car looks pretty snappy, but it doesn't seem to be aimed at customers who might otherwise buy the sportiest Ibiza, Fabia or Polo. If it were, Audi would presumably have given it some fancy name. Instead, it's badged simply as the 1.4 TFSI 185PS, and all that does is distinguish it from the cheaper and less powerful 1.4 TFSI 122PS. There will be still more powerful A1s with no doubt more resonant names, of course, but it does seem as if this model is being rather shortchanged.

185PS refers to the power output, and it's the metric equivalent of 183bhp, which is actually 5bhp more than you get out of those other cars I keep mentioning. Officially that makes it about as quick as the Polo and a little quicker than the other two, but there really isn't much in it. A more obvious contrast is that Audi hasn't provided paddleshifts - either you leave the car to change gear by itself or you use the gearlever.

Somewhat more concerning is the A1's behaviour on the road. Before I go any further I should point out that the test car was fitted with winter tyres, and they were in the optional 225/35 size on 18" wheels - as standard, Audi fits 215/40x17s. On that rubber, the car may behave better, but it's still disappointing that it did what it did on the tyres supplied.

Most of this test was conducted in damp conditions. I didn't drive especially hard, but even so those tyres just didn't want to know. Even a moderate amount of throttle in mid-corner made them want to spin, and they were persuaded not to do so only by the intervention of the traction control system. There were also signs that lateral grip wasn't up to much either, and that it would be quite easy to make the car slide if the electronics allowed it to.

The ride quality is pretty firm, and that's down to the tyres too. The suspension is really quite soft, and in a manner which I thought Audi had grown out of it's also underdamped at the front, at least for British roads if not for German ones. The result - quite independent of anything that the tyres do - is that the A1 seems nervous when being driven even remotely sportingly, and doesn't give the driver as much sense of being in control as I would like it to.

I've driven various versions of the Cupra, the vRS and the GTI for many hundreds of miles in total, several of them on a test track (this feature on the Cupra gives further details), and none of them behaved remotely the same way that the A1 does. It's very disappointing, and I'm sorry that Audi, with its tradition of building extremely good performance cars, has dropped the catch so badly on this occasion.

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