On our latest drive, my wife and I were talking about the cars we’ve reviewed these past few months. We both concluded that there’s a special place in hell for the T-Roc, that we would never buy a Jeep Wrangler, and that our Seat Ibiza has so much potential it makes it the best car we’ve driven. We then realised that we had not talked about the Audi A1 at all. We had it for a little over a week, drove over 1000 kilometres in it, and gave it back a couple of days ago. Yet, we completely zapped it from our conversation, until now. That’s because the A1 doesn’t have anything distinguishing itself from the other cars we’ve sat into lately. Nothing was so bad that it scarred me for life -I’m looking at you T-Roc- and nothing was so good that it created a new yellow-coloured memory in my brain. 

This is the second generation of the Audi A1. It’s also the last generation of the A1. A spokes person from Audi, whose name has completely escaped my mind, said that this is the last generation and they will not be replacing it. I suspect that it’s because the sales were equally as unremarkable as the car. 

The Audi A1 is for the man who drinks Suntory Whiskey Toki. The much talked about Japanese whiskey. It’s not bad, but you can get better whiskey for the same price. What you’re paying extra money for is the Japanese lettering on the front of its square bottle, because it makes you feel fancy to have that. In the same way, for 23000€ you can get a better car than the A1, but you won’t be disappointed by your purchase because you have four rings on your front grill.

We had it in a very dark blue, it looked fine, but it looks much better in grey. The interior is not badly designed, everything is focused on the driver, which I like. The infotainment system is ok, some functionalities are intuitive and some aren’t. It lacks a little bit of the luxury you’d expect in an Audi, but it’s still more luxurious than its rivals. It handles well, it’s relatively precise, but there is no communication through the steering wheel at all. 

The one I drove was the 25 TFSI. That’s Audi-talk for “base model”. The poor man’s Audi A1 is powered by a 3-cylinder turbo that makes enough horsepower to move the car, and the 5-speed manual transmission changes the gears. Nothing more, nothing less. The turbo lag is irritating and I don’t understand why they didn’t put the 1L three cylinder turbo from the Seat Ibiza.

Look, all in all, the Audi A1 is a car that does car things, but you’ll have an Audi logo slapped on your steering wheel while you’re doing them. I suspect forgetting this car very soon, the same way I forgot the plot of Deadpool 2. It was a good movie, but like the Audi A1, it was definitely not as memorable as its predecessor. 

Max,