Audi A6 Avant Review & Prices

It’s a seriously head-turning thing, the Audi A6 Avant - more than a big, family estate car has any right to be, really. It’s also hugely comfortable and spacious inside, but it’s a shame that interior quality has taken a hit compared to the old A6.

Where it still shines, though, is in engine choice. While you can only buy the new BMW 5 Series Touring as a petrol or hybrid you can still get the A6 Avant with a good old-fashioned diesel engine - perfect for long-distance drivers. If an electric car takes your fancy, the Audi A6 e-tron Avant is available too - though it’s related to this car only by name.

It’s like Eastenders introducing a whole new raft of characters for the latest season, but keeping on Ian Beale who’s been there for as long as you can remember. The Mercedes E-Class Estate still offers a diesel too, but we’re not sure it’s going to stick around for much longer.

Where the Merc is all big, upright and imposing - and the 5 Series is a bit too weird - the A6 Avant is one of the sleekest estate cars we’ve ever seen. The broad grille and stretched-back headlights are the same as the saloon, but the long roofline and rakish rear window look fantastic with the big, bulging rear arches. You get a similar rear lightbar as on the saloon, but we reckon it looks better here.

It’s not just the exterior that drew a lot of compliments, but the interior too. It’s similar to Audi’s other models at the moment, but the wide dual-screen solution fits better in the A6’s wide cabin than in most of its siblings, while the rest of the design looks very swish - especially the wraparound dashboard.

Opt for a high-spec A6 and you get Audi’s divisive - and over-the-top, triple-screens on the dashboard. That’s still better than the unsightly plastic block in its place on low-spec cars, but the whole cabin has lost the ‘strong-like-ox’ feeling that older Audi cabins had, with scratchy plastics on the centre console and lower dashboard.

The A6 Avant’s enormous size means there’s plenty of space inside, and the seats are oh-so-comfortable both front and rear. There’s a large hump in the middle of the floor, but otherwise you’ll fit three adults back there with ease. The 503-litre boot is far smaller than in the 5 Series and E-Class, though.

On the road the A6 Avant shines, ironing out lumps and bumps around town. Stick to the 20-inch wheels or below - the 21s spoil things a bit, but otherwise it’s a cosseting experience. Tight roads feel extra narrow in the large Audi, so it’s well worth opting for the rear-wheel steering which vastly improves agility.

It’s even better on the motorway, with minimal wind and road noise on the move at high speed and an excellent sense of stability. For B-road bashing you’d better look to BMW, because while the A6 is perfectly capable of carving through corners, the 5 Series is far more fun.

Check out the latest Audi A6 Avant deals to get this fantastic 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.

The A6 Avant is a couple of thousand pounds more expensive than the A6 Saloon, starting at £54,000, but it’s worth it for the extra practicality and style, in our books. It’s a bit cheaper than the BMW 5 Series, and a lot cheaper than the Mercedes E-Class Estate, as a result.

You’ll pay from £61,000 for the range-topping Edition 1 model in petrol guise, while as a plug-in e-Hybrid the price rises to a hefty £71,000 - before you add any options. Spicy.

You get Matrix LED headlights as standard, 360-degree parking cameras and sensors, 18-inch wheels, self-parking capability, four-zone climate control and heated seats, too.

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 gearbox is smooth as they come and responds quickly if you need to nip into gaps, while the suspension deals well with bumps at low speeds - especially if you opt for a top-spec car on air suspension.

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 in the A6 Avant is plenty for most families but does lag behind the competition a fair bit. At 503 litres it’s smaller than the BMW 5 Series Touring (570 litres), Volvo V90 (551 litres) and the gargantuan Mercedes E-Class Estate (615 litres).

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.

Audi’s set to introduce plug-in hybrid engines to the A6 Avant at a later date, and these will certainly be the pick of the range for company car drivers. At present, though, there are just two engines - both 2.0-litre, four-cylinders with 204hp, though one is petrol and one is diesel.

The TFSI petrol engine is paired to front-wheel drive, returns up to 39.5mpg and emits 162g/km according to official figures. The diesel, meanwhile, returns up to 54.2mpg and emits just 137g/km. It also gets four-wheel drive, and thanks to greater low-end pulling power is definitely the pick of the engines.

However, neither can compete with a plug-in hybrid for running costs, making the BMW 530e or Volvo V90 T6 both better bets if you’re concerned about Benefit-in-Kind. If you want something like the A6 Avant, check out the fully electric A6 Avant e-tron instead.

All versions of the A6 Avant attract a chunky first year tax bill and are liable for the expensive car supplement in years two to six of ownership.

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 19th out of 31 brands in the 2025 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey - a long way behind Mercedes and BMW in second and eighth places, respectively.

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 100,000 miles over the same time period. You can pay to extend your Audi warranty, should you choose.