17 January 2011

What’s the best car you’ve ever driven? After more than 30 years of writing about cars, that’s still a question I can’t answer.

How can you compare a £100,000 supercar with a £50,000 executive or a £15,000 family hatchback. Anyway, as we all know, the typical family is much more likely to spend £9995 – so most of my new car experiences are rather irrelevant.

That’s one of the things that’s fun about the What Car? Car of the Year awards. They don’t appear to bear any relevance to the ‘real world’ at all. Certainly they take no account of success on the retail forecourt; though I can’t deny the What Car? stamp of approval may well create an uplift in sales.

The awards dinner is a bit like a Friday night down the pub, when the lads get together and decide their favourite cars – every table is rooting for their particular brand; every guest has his or her opinion.

Last year, the revelation that the mag voted for the Peugeot 3008 was greeted with a stunned silence of disbelief followed by a polite ripple of applause. At least this year’s Car of the Year, the Audi A1, seemed to go down rather better.

Surprisingly, this was the first year that Audi has ever won the top award despite producing ground-breaking cars like the A2; not exactly a best seller but certainly revolutionary in design terms.

I suspect Audi retailers are not going to need too much help shifting A1 though I hear, at the moment, most of its sales are going within the Audi family. It’s just not funky enough to pull customers out of Mini or Citroen DS3.

Probably we’ll have to wait till it hits the used forecourts before we know whether A1 is going to bring new buyers to Audi. It won’t be £9995 just yet, but it’s certainly a car that’s going to keep the retail industry happy for many years to come.

Whether your an Audi retailer or not, have a great week, both in and out of the showroom. If you have a story for us, or want to get something off your chest, email rupert@auto-retail.com

Rupert Saunders

Tags: Audi A1, Budget, Car of the Year, family car, used car, What Car? Awards