Audi had a record year in 2011 with worldwide sales up 19.2% to 1.3m cars. With sales up 37% in China to 313,000 units last year, targeting growth markets has clearly been successful. But there has also been a long standing strategy to fill out the product range. Dave Leggett takes a look at the latest offering – the A1 Sportback.
The German premium brands have a number of things in common. The brands themselves – Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi – are obviously highly respected across the world. They come with the familiar and highly desirable ‘old-Europe’ German engineering values. In many of the lately much richer emerging markets, you let people know that you are doing mighty fine thank you by driving one (or being driven in one).
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And the three have all been very busy over the last ten years with global sales and manufacturing strategies. You take those prized core brand values to the world in a manner that keeps your costs down – with some local assembly of vehicles – without damaging the brand. Build ’em where you sell ’em also helps with currency exchange rate risks. Big emerging markets like China are top of the target list. And those premium values should continue to shine through, whether the vehicle was actually assembled in Bavaria or Shenyang.
The other thing they have all been doing is adding new models to grow into new market niches. Selling executive saloons alongside sporty coupes and cabrios off the same family platforms is fine, but to grow volumes and the bottom line, getting into additional niches has been an important strategy.
Audi says that between 2001 and 2012 it has gone from selling 17 models to 41. The obvious additions since 2001 are the RS models, the A5, A7 and the SUVs (Q5, Q6 and Q7).
At the bottom end, we’ve now got the A1 (the A2, by the way, died a death because its heavy use of expensive aluminium and low-volume posed price-point and profitability issues). Audi brought out the 3-door Audi A1 in 2010. It has now followed up with a 5-door model – the A1 Sportback.
At first glance, the Sportback looks just like the 3-door A1 with a couple of extra doors. But Audi being Audi, there are some important differences that have required significant investment to emphasise Audi values and premium credentials. Space in the back is an obvious place for the designers to start when moving from three to five doors. Compared with the 3-door A1, the roof line is very slightly higher and longer. The A1 Sportback is six millimetres taller and six millimetres wider than the 3-door A1, but its length and wheelbase are identical. To accommodate the doors the B-pillars have been shifted forward by roughly 23 centimetres, and the roof has been lengthened by in excess of 80 millimetres in the interest of rear headroom.
Audi expects that the 5-door will attract more couples with children (yep, it should do). It also anticipates that there will be a high proportion of first-time buyers and migration from non-premium marques (tick a box again; some people simply won’t consider three doors). And five doors rather than three, I am told, increase the attractiveness of any vehicle in the fleet market. The business case for the purchase is stronger in many instances.
Audi has clearly been looking at Mini. With the Mini Clubman, you add a little utility on what is basically still a very compact package. And, as with the Mini, Audi will also be stressing the high degree of customisation that is available. There are ‘contrast’ roof choices (exclusive to the Sportback), interior customisation options and a large selection of wheels as well as tech/connectivity packages. In addition to the various finishes, Audi offers a number of other exterior personalisation options, including privacy glass and a black styling package which surrounds the frames of the single-frame grille, fog lights and license plate holder in highly polished black.
The Audi A2 bombed because of the extensive use of expensive aluminium in the body structure. The A1 Sportback, by contrast, makes use of high-strength and ultra-high-strength steel. They comprise roughly two-thirds of the superstructure of the A1 Sportback. Topping the materials pyramid are the hot-shaped steels. The blanks are heated in a furnace to high temperatures then immediately shaped in a water-cooled pressing die. This rapid change in temperature imparts them with extremely high tensile strength.
Hot-shaped steels comprise roughly 11% of the body and, Audi maintains, are a major reason for its low weight of 220 kilograms. They are used in the area of the passenger cell, in the rear sections of the longitudinal members, in the roof arch and in the A-pillars and B-pillars – in all places where ultra high strength combined with low weight is particularly important.
The Audi A1 Sportback is initially available in the UK with a choice of four engines: three TFSI petrol units and one TDI. All are directly injected and adhere to the downsizing principle whereby turbo charging effectively compensates for displacement, enabling smaller capacity units to retain the performance potential of larger alternatives while at the same time returning good fuel economy and low CO2. With the exception of the 1.4 TFSI 185 PS engine, all the engines in the A1 Sportback use technologies from the Audi modular efficiency platform, including the start-stop system.
The upcoming 1.4-litre TFSI engine (available later this year) includes the ‘cylinder on demand’ technology that recently debuted on the S6, S7 Sportback and S8. It shuts down the second and third cylinders of the four-cylinder engine under low and intermediate loads and when coasting (when the engine is operating at between 1,400 and 4,000 rpm with torque output between 25 and 75 Nm. That, says VW, results in a performance petrol engine with the frugality of a diesel. It will do 0-62 mph in 8.2 secs, has a top speed of 132 mph and can also turn in 60.1 mpg for an average CO2 of 115g/km – the best fuel consumption on the A1 petrol engines. Clever. Audi says that engine delivers driving pleasure with ‘competition-beating fuel economy’. It is described by Audi as a ‘real alternative to the 2.0-litre TDI at a lower price’.
A 1.6-litre TDI engine is the first diesel unit to power the new A1 Sportback – it will be joined later in 2012 by the 2.0-litre TDI.
Other notable options on the A1 Sportback include online services bringing Google Earth mapping and in-car internet access. A WLAN hotspot connects mobile devices on board to the internet via a Bluetooth-capable and data-enabled phone is present or a dedicated SIM card is inserted into the in-dash reader. It beams Google Earth images to the navigation system, along with specially prepared news, weather and travel information, web radio and voice controlled points of interest search. It also incorporates Google Street View images.
The Technology Package adds a 40 GB hard drive that delivers high resolution 3D navigation mapping and also devotes 20 GB to the storage of up to 8,000 music tracks. A 14 speaker BOSE surround system with 465 Watt output is available.
There are also standard Audi spec refinements such as the distinctive LED daytime running lights, LED tail lights, Xenon plus headlights, light and rain sensors and so on.
Sales of the A1 in the all-important Chinese market are due to start there later in 2012 and it is presumed that the car would be built in Changchun by the Shanghai Volkswagen joint venture. However, Audi says it will not sell any A1 variants in the US market. Mexico is the car’s only North American market.
I started off this article with a little consideration of the similarities of the German premium brands. They also have their significant differences. BMW is quite specialised but is also into motorcycles. And you will see the Mercedes-Benz three-pointed star on commercial vehicles. Audi? Well, you won’t see that brand on anything but a car, but the big difference from the other two is custodial: Audi is a part of the automotive superpower that is Volkswagen Group.
VW’s industrial strategy means there are common platforms across brands and a rising level of modularisation – some shared kit – within.
The Audi A1 shares platform – AO5 – and engines with the Volkswagen Polo and others. It could be argued that the A1 is a ‘rebodied Polo’ with a premium (Sportback prices range from GBP14,000 to GBP21,270). But the cynics are perhaps missing the point. VW has the industrial strength to do this and it makes perfect sense to get into as many niches as you can with your brand and do that with an industrial strategy that spreads costs across models and brands. Appeal to as many customers as you can. Does the consumer care about the under-the-skin sharing stuff? No, not greatly. They care much more about the product that they have to climb into and drive. Audi and its parent are astute enough to ensure that there is sufficient differentiation on that front.
And all this activity at the lower end of the car market spectrum? Well, if you have a happy customer who has had an A1, maybe they will consider a bigger Audi car in the future. One interesting point that came out of conversations I had with Audi folk is that they are not exactly pushing this car. It’s really not a big volume driver (A1 model sales in UK last year were a little under 19,000 units and that’s expected to be around the same this year, even with the 5-door Sportback added). But it does certainly reinforce the brand’s presence at the small car end of the car market. Expect an S, a crossover and a cabrio version to follow – more niches that Audi can do. Why? Because it can and because they can sell all over the world.
And it is brand stretch married to sheer industrial might (volume) and global footprint that Ferdinand Piech believes will get VW Group to the coveted pole position in the global auto industry. The Audi A1 Sportback is another example, if needed, of the VW Group’s strength and intent. Some other car companies might well not have bothered.
