Audi A6 Avant Review & Prices

The Audi A6 is an unusually glamorous way to transport a family and their luggage. It looks great, has lots of passenger space, a wide choice of engines and is very relaxing on a long journey - but the boot is pretty small and the interior doesn’t have the ‘hewn-from-granite’ quality that made previous generations so impressive.

One of the A6’s biggest strengths is its choice of engines. There’s a petrol and a plug-in hybrid, but there’s also an efficient diesel perfect for high-mileage drivers. Increasing numbers of cars are phasing out diesel altogether, as BMW has done with the 5 Series, but the A6 Avant is like the cast of Eastenders. Shiny new faces come and go, but the diesel is Ian Beale - impossible to kill off.

The closest alternatives to the A6 Avant are the aforementioned BMW 5 Series but also the Mercedes E-Class Estate, the Volvo V90 or comparable SUVs such as the Audi Q5, BMW X3 and Lexus RX.

The A6 Avant is one of the sleekest-looking estate cars around, in contrast to the more traditional and upright Mercedes E-Class or the striking (if somewhat challenging) BMW 5 Series Touring. The A6’s broad grille and narrow headlights work particularly well with the long roof, sloping rear window and enormous haunches over the rear wheels. The full-width rear lights arguably suit the Avant better than they do the A6 saloon, too.

The interior makes an equally strong first impression. It’s similar to Audi’s other recent models, but the sweeping dash and widescreen layout feel more at home in the A6’s wide cabin than in some of the brand’s smaller cars. The 11.9-inch driver display and 14.5-inch central screen look suitably high-tech, too.

Spend some time poking around, though, and the A6 doesn’t feel quite as special as its predecessor. There are some scratchier plastics around the lower dashboard and the centre console than you’d expect in a car this expensive, while various touch-sensitive controls don’t have the satisfying solidity of the older A6’s physical switches. High-spec versions get a third screen for the front passenger, which looks suitably futuristic, but cars without it have a very ugly blank panel in its place.

Passenger space is excellent. The front seats are hugely comfortable, there’s loads of room in the back and four tall adults can travel long distances without complaint. Boot space is less impressive: petrol and diesel models have 503 litres, already some way behind a BMW 5 Series Touring or Mercedes E-Class Estate, while the e-Hybrid drops to just 404 litres because its battery hardware lives beneath the boot floor.

The A6 is at its best when you stop trying to rush it. It rides well around town, feels wonderfully settled at motorway speeds and keeps wind and tyre noise impressively subdued. The e-Hybrid suits that character particularly well, because it’s almost silent running on electricity and the transition between electric and petrol power is exceptionally smooth. Its 299hp also makes it effortlessly quick when you need it.

The downside is weight. You can feel the e-Hybrid’s extra bulk on a twisting road, and even the lighter petrol and diesel versions aren’t as entertaining as a BMW 5 Series Touring. The steering is accurate but remote, and there’s noticeable body movement when you push harder. All-wheel steering helps enormously with agility - and it’s standard on the e-Hybrid - but this is still much more of a luxury mile-muncher than an oversized sports car.

Verdict

The Audi A6 is a great option for long-distance drivers, and it looks great too - but a BMW 5 Series Touring is better to drive, especially on a twisty road, and the Mercedes E-Class has a much more practical boot. Both of those examples feel a bit more special and solid inside too, which you’d hope for when you’re spending this much money.

Check out the latest Audi A6 Avant deals to get this estate car on your driveway, or Audi A6 Avant lease deals instead. There are used A6 Avants for sale through our network of trusted dealers, as well as other used Audis, and Carwow can help you sell your car when the time comes, too.

Starting at just over £54,000, the A6 Avant is a little bit cheaper than the BMW 5 Series Touring and a few thousand pounds below the Mercedes E-Class Estate. The diesel will cost you just over £58,000, while the e-Hybrid jumps up to nearly £64,000 - making it more expensive than the BMW 530e Touring, albeit a bit better equipped.

There are four main trim levels. Sport is already very well kitted-out, with 18-inch alloy wheels, Matrix LED headlights, heated and electrically adjustable front seats, four-zone climate control, adaptive cruise control and a 360-degree camera system. S Line costs around £1,300 more and adds sportier styling, 19-inch wheels and sports seats, while Black Edition brings the usual dark exterior trim and larger wheels.

Vorsprung sits at the top of the range and adds luxuries such as a passenger touchscreen, panoramic glass roof, upgraded lighting and a Bang & Olufsen stereo. Prices climb quickly once you combine the posher trims with the plug-in hybrid powertrain, with an e-Hybrid Vorsprung costing £73,535.

More comfortable than a BMW 5 Series on the motorway, but less exciting in the corners

In town

You do miss an SUV’s high seating position when you’re in the A6 - it feels very low to the ground, and as a result it’s not quite so easy to lord it over other traffic. Visibility out is very good, though, thanks to loads of glass especially in the crucial over-the-shoulder blindspot.

A 360-degree camera system as well as auto parking and all-round sensors all come as standard even on the most basic model, so the A6 Avant should prove easy to park - although it’s a very long car, so you won’t be squeezing it into the tightest of spaces.

The A6 Avant’s automatic gearbox is smooth and responsive, while the suspension deals well with bumps at low speeds - particularly on cars fitted with adaptive suspension. The e-Hybrid is even more relaxing around town, because it can spend plenty of time running almost silently on electric power and switches between its electric motor and petrol engine very smoothly. It also gets all-wheel steering as standard, which makes such a huge car surprisingly manoeuvrable.

On the motorway

The A6 feels as though it was made for the motorway - especially if you opt for the long-legged diesel model, meaning you’ll be able to go over 600 miles on a tank if you’re careful.

Adaptive cruise control comes as standard, as does the usual glut of lane-keeping and speed limit aids.

The suspension deals very well with expansion joints and rutted road surfaces, and noise is kept to an absolute minimum - especially wind noise. In fact, the A6 Avant is one of the most aerodynamic cars you can buy, which definitely helps.

On a twisty road

Get to an exciting B-road and the A6 Avant doesn’t feel quite as much at home as a BMW 5 Series Touring does. Both engines sound quite coarse when they’re revved, especially the diesel, which doesn’t really befit the strong-and-silent nature of the A6. And even with the suspension in its stiffest setting, there’s quite a lot of body lean - more than you might expect from such a low car.

The steering also doesn’t reassure you like a BMW’s does, as while it’s light and accurate it doesn’t really give you much inkling of what the front wheels are doing. The A6 is more like a Volvo V90 in that regard - while you can drive it fast, you don’t really feel very rewarded for doing so.

Two rear passengers can get comfy, but a third will be cramped - and the boot isn’t very big

The A6’s Avant’s front seats are a lovely place to spend time. They’re wide, comfortable and electrically adjustable as standard, with plenty of support for drivers of all sizes. They also go back an exceptionally long way - basketball players could get comfortable behind the wheel of the A6.

Storage for smaller items is a bit lacking, though. The door bins and glovebox are big, but there’s nowhere to toss keys or wallets except under the armrest. The cupholders also don’t get a cover, unlike in the BMW 5 Series Touring or Volvo V90 - so you can’t put your pocket contents in them and then keep them out of sight.

Space in the rear seats

Two occupants will be able to get very comfortable in the rear of the A6 Avant. Legroom and headroom is plentiful - it’s roomier than a BMW 5 Series Touring - and they get a great view out with big windows. The seats are squashy and supportive, and there’s a set of air-conditioning controls, a wide centre armrest, and door bins and seat back pockets for storage.

The rear doors open nice and wide and the ISOFIX points are easy to get at under convenient foldaway covers.

It’s a shame that it’s not as much fun for a third passenger, though. The centre seat is much higher and narrower than the outer two, and there’s a monster of a transmission tunnel disrupting the floor that a centre passenger will have to uncomfortably straddle.

Boot space

Boot space is one of the A6 Avant’s weaker points, and opting for the plug-in hybrid makes things considerably worse. Petrol and diesel models have 503 litres of space, compared with 570 litres in the BMW 5 Series Touring and 615 litres in non-hybrid versions of the Mercedes E-Class Estate. The A6 e-Hybrid has just 404 litres because of the batteries beneath the boot floor, falling well behind even the plug-in hybrid versions of its main alternatives.

The boot is neatly trimmed and has loads of clever storage solutions to hold your luggage in place or divide it up - they store in a shallow compartment under the boot floor. It’s also nice that the rear seats fold in a 40:20:40 split rather than the more usual 60:40, giving you maximum flexibility when it comes to balancing passengers and load space.

The seats fold flat easily from levers in the boot, and they lie completely level with the boot floor, making it easy to load long or bulky items.

High-spec interior doesn’t feel as solid as you’d like in some places, and feels stingy in lower trims

The A6’s interior is very similar to that on the A6 e-tron as well as the taller Q5 and Q6 e-tron. It uses the same array of screens and much of the same switchgear, with mixed results. While it’s nicely built and reasonably user-friendly, it doesn’t feel as solid, classy or straightforward as its immediate predecessor.

The strongest factor in this is the excessive use of shiny, fingerprint-magnet piano black plastic. Not only does this look greasy and streaky almost as soon as it’s been touched, but it picks up dust really easily.

There are also a few areas where discrete buttons have been replaced by haptic panels - such as the combined lighting and mirror switch panel on the door, or the steering wheel controls. These flex under the finger and don’t feel as posh as the proper buttons you used to get.

All cars get two displays - a driver screen and a huge 14.5-inch infotainment setup. This controls just about everything in the car, including the climate - but it’s responsive and slick to use, the equal of BMW’s system in this regard. It’s just a shame you can’t navigate it with a scroll wheel while you’re on the move, to avoid having to reach out to scroll through menus.

Top-spec cars also get an additional 10.1-inch display for the passenger side, which allows them to control media or watch videos. It’s invisible to the driver when doing the latter thanks to a clever polarising feature. It’s a totally unnecessary addition - most passengers will probably prefer to watch something on their phone - but on models which don’t have it you get a really ugly slab of plastic in its place, which is a real pity.

There are three engine choices in the A6 Avant, all based around 2.0-litre, four-cylinder engines. The basic 204hp petrol drives the front wheels and officially manages around 39mpg, while the 204hp diesel gets four-wheel drive and returns up to 54mpg. For long-distance drivers, the diesel is easily the most economical option.

The 299hp e-Hybrid also has a 2.0-litre petrol engine but gets an electric motor and four-wheel drive too. Its large, 20.7kWh battery gives it an electric range of around 60 miles, on par with the BMW 5 Series but less than the Mercedes E-Class PHEV.

The official fuel economy of over 100mpg will depend on how often you charge it - but with a discharged battery we saw around 40mpg from this model, which is respectable for a large and powerful petrol car but nowhere near what the diesel can manage. The e-Hybrid is nevertheless the pick of the range for company car drivers thanks to its low BiK rating.

All versions of the A6 Avant cost more than £40,000, so they’re liable for the expensive car supplement from the second to sixth year of registration. The e-Hybrid does at least have a much lower first-year VED bill than the petrol or diesel versions thanks to its lower official CO2 output.

Audi A66 Euro NCAP score (2024): 5/5

Adult occupant: 87%
Child occupant: 88%
Vulnerable road users: 78%
Safety assist: 77%

The A6 Avant scored a full five-star rating when tested by Euro NCAP - making it Audi’s 18th five-star result since 2015. The individual scores weren’t quite as impressive as on the all-electric A6 e-tron, but it still returned a high rating of 87% for adult occupants and 88% for child occupants.

All the safety equipment you’d expect is standard, and it’s easy to switch off the more irritating mandatory systems thanks to a shortcut key next to the gear selector. They’re quite sophisticated, though, so you might not feel too bad about leaving some of them on - the semi-autonomous motorway aids are particularly good.

Audi came a disappointing 23rd out of 30 manufacturers in the 2026 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey. That puts it well behind BMW, which finished fifth, while Mercedes topped the table altogether.

The A6 Avant uses all-new underpinnings and its engines are pretty new too, so there’s not much historical reliability data to go off. The old A6 wasn’t known for being particularly troublesome, but servicing any premium car can be expensive, so budget plenty for bills just in case.

You get a three-year, 60,000-mile warranty with the A6 Avant, which isn’t as good as Mercedes or BMW, both offering the same time period but unlimited mileage. You can pay to extend your Audi warranty, should you choose.