2009 Audi A4 Avant: Why Buy the Wagon, Again?

Perhaps Audi calls it an Avant is to lessen the association with "station wagon". "Station wagon" reeks of practicality, family, and function whereas "Avant" is a ...ah... lifestyle vehicle with practicality taking a back seat to aesthetics.

I ordered one because I wanted a good platform for hauling a kayak and because to me it looks better than the sedan.

Heck, if I could safely haul a kayak on a TT/S, I would have ordered one of those.

So in any case, the Avant does "work" for chumps like me but those folks that really do need a wagon, it's Subaru time.

It will be my fourth Audi and second wagon ...oops, I mean Avant.

The 'sporty' slope to the hatch eats into some of its cargo room.

One nice thing with the wagon over a sedan is you do have a higher opening to fit larger items in with the seats forward. In a sedan with the seats forward you still have the rear deck to fit things under. With the hatchback setup you have the full height all the way forward.
The hatchback/wagon setup really spoils me. I just wish they offered more of them in the US.

Same amount of cargo room as my 3 hatch- wow...

We ran into a similar problem back in 2004 when we were cross shopping a VW Golf with a VW Jetta Wagon. Ultimately, the Jetta Wagon was several thousand more with only a very slight cargo space increase over the Golf. The Golf, which also looks better, was eventually purchased.

Wow, that's tiny. I've been eying an A4 wagon as a step up from my WRX wagon because I wanted something bigger. However, my WRX wagon has almost 28 cu ft of luggage space with the rear seats up (61.6 with the seats down). I'm not willing to sacrifice that much cargo area, so I guess the A4 is a no go for me.

Is the previous generation A4 similarly poorly endowed?

They should've left the sporty sloped hatch to the A3. But it's not just the slope, it's the length too. To me, a real wagon has a third side window no shorter than the rear passenger side windows. A 5-door hatch (like the Protege5 or previous Impreza 5-door) has a shorter third side window or none at all.

Byron, I think they also call it Avant because in Europe there isn't a standard word for station wagon. "Estate" seems to be the most common word in England but only there. To not use a different name in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, etc., you might as well use a proprietary name that's easy to say in all their languages.

As a followup to my last post, I did some research and the 2008 A4 wagon has about the same cargo capacity as my WRX wagon - 27.8 cu ft. It's kind of baffling they'd compromise the primary function of the wagon so much with this new version.

The "I can't believe this has the same cargo space as [fill in the blank]" posts amused me because I went through the same thing with my own car. My wife and I have a 1999.5 A4 Avant, and it's surprisingly cramped -- my sister's Honda Fit has a roomier back seat, and they're not much different for hauling cargo. I know the new A4 is larger, but it's still not that roomy.

When it was time to take my 8' (and portly) Christmas tree to the recycling center, I folded the seats and fit it all in there with room to spare. I could have even taken a passenger in the second front seat, if I had wanted. Do that with a sedan. :)

Granted, it's an extreme and rare example, but it's nice to have that kind of cargo capacity when you need it. I've done numerous runs to the dump with it, as well as bringing large items to and from my storage unit.

With that said, there are definitely times when I wish I had a larger vehicle, but those are more than offset by the number of times I wished I had a smaller vehicle. My car is all about compromising family/hauler duties with performance (it's an S4 Avant). It's hard to find a better compromise than that.

Numbers don't tell the story.
Put stuff in this car's trunk, then put the same stuff in another car's trunk to compare.

I agree wagons/crossovers have smaller trunks than the numbers suggest.

Sedans really have the biggest trunks, even though their numbers don't say so.

I think it would be much easier to load cargo in the Avant (so much fun to say :D) then the sedan. Also, I agree with you guys that the Avant looks better.

I think it's easier to load cargo in the sedan than the Avant.

The sedan has a lip at the end, so stuff you pile in the trunk doesn't slide right out the back onto the gorund while you're trying to stuff more in the trunk.

The wagon has a flat load floor with no lip at the end, which will let things slide out onto the ground while you stuff it.
Quiet annoying actually. (Personal experience, not with the A4 per se.)

The Mitsubishi Outlander solved this problem by having a split tailgate, allowing both the deep well of a sedan, and a flat load floor of a wagon.

call me weird, but the one thing the avant has that the sedan doesn't is looks i think. The hatch on the avant gives it a certain proportion i thought the sedan was missing. Now all we need is the option of a 6 speed manual...

I agree a boxier Volvo-esque design would provide some much need cubic feet, but even this compromised wagon has some real advantages over a sedan. The shape and accessibility of it is nice when you do have bulky items. I'm thinking of pet owners - the responsible ones who use travel crates, not the bozos who let them ride in their lap, wander around the cabin unrestrained, or in the bed of their pickup. (Steps down from soap box) You can't, nor would you want to, put a dog kennel in a sedan's trunk. Looks like you could probably fit a medium (beagle-sized, in my case) travel crate in the back of the Avant. Or at least get a cargo mat and put up one of those barriers and let Fido ride in the rear.

that is not a lot of space behind the rear seats for a wagon. The Taurus has 21 cu ft of space in its trunk. I had no idea it was that small. Also, if you really used all 17 cu ft you would block the rear window.

It's a hatchback. I guess that's not as sexy as a wagon. No, neither is sexy. I don't know why they mislabeled it.

and apparently they pinched the security track from Saab's 9-3 sportcombi.....

Have you ever tried to fit something like say a medium sized tube TV into the trunk of a modern sedan like the A4? The short rear deck that is typical of today's cars means that a tall, deep box won't fit.

The hatch/Avant style however gives much more flexibility in the size of your cargo. The extra CF of the Avant may not seem significant, but the extra utility you get from the tall hatch opening is HUGE.

Honda Fit has so much more space.

considering the rake of the rear glass on the A4 you better not have rear passengers if you plan on fitting a large box in the cargo hold.

True about all that... but if you can have a wagon with this much style and all the versatility of well... a normal wagon, Why not?

Good grief, people. Should it make coffee and sandwiches too? It is what it is, a stylish and not terribly large wagon with a roofline that does indeed compromise interior space to a degree. In fact, clearly the idea was to do this for the sake of aesthetics. It's not as if anyone is forced to buy it though. Buy a Volvo or a Subaru instead and no one's feelings will be hurt. Nothing wrong with either choice. And you would certainly be in the majority too. But there's a group of us...

I've had the 2009 A4 Avant since December. I debated the Sedan vs. the Avant and went with the Avant for the marginal benefit the trunk offers. In particular, it allows me to put my dirty Labrador in the back and not in the passenger space. Works fine with kids in the rear seat. There is not huge amount of additional utility the Avant offers as a station wagon. There is some, but agree with other comments that this is not the car to buy based on just utility.

One other point, the roof racks on the Avant are the same as Q7 and Q5. Appears Audi makes some nice accessories which allow you to add ski racks, bike racks, etc. I've not tried, but there might be some additional utility here.

I'm happy I got the Avant because it does hold the Lab and drives like a sedan and not an SUV. That's all I wanted. I suppose over time I'll find opportunites to put down the back seats and get more use out of it as a station wagon.

I think people in the U.S. just don't like wagons in general. I think wagons can be nearly perfect vehicles, a blend of performance and utility. But most people in the U.S. feel about wagons like they feel about minivans. They'd rather buy a pseudo-SUV like a BMW X3 than the 3-series wagon even though the wagon has more interior room and handles much better. Image is everything. And btw, the Mazda 3 has 4-doors so it's really a small wagon and not a hatchback. Same with Subarus, the Audi A3, etc. Hatchbacks are 2-door vehicles (like the Mini Cooper or the 2-door variety of VW GTI/Golf or the old Honda civics).

As for large sedan trunks, yeah they hold more than a wagon if the wagon has the rear seat up. But once the wagon has the passenger seat down, the holding capacity isn't even close. I own a '03 Lexus IS300 Sportcross that handles and runs as well as the sedan version but offers much more functionality. Lexus was also scared to call it a wagon and now doesn't offer it at all in the new model line. I was going to trade my wagon in on the new A4 Avant because, like my Lexus, it's also a good looking, good handling, and very functional package.

If you don't like "avant", you may refer to it as a "shooting brake." Good luck explaining that to people.