Audi 80 Avant – First driving test – From the Old Box

You can hardly imagine it after many generations of Audi A4 Avant, but Audi joined the middle class relatively late at the station wagon party. The first Audi 80 Avant came on the market in 1992. By the way, also the last one, since the first generation A4 took over from the 80 in 1996. BMW was already there in 1987 with the 3-series Touring and of course you could also shop at various other brands in the middle class for a station wagon. Mercedes-Benz waited even longer than Audi, because that only came in 1996 with the first C-class Combi.

Where nowadays the sedan usually has to lose out in the sales figures against the station wagon, that was certainly not the case in 1992. Still, the station wagon started to catch on more and more and apparently enough for Audi to also hook up with the 80. It did that in its own way, with a roofline that was quite sloping for a station wagon at the time. “It was the intent of the designers not to make the rear of the 80 Avant not angular and van-like, and they succeeded very well.” Later on, the term ‘lifestyle station’ would be coined to indicate these stations focused more on aesthetics than on space. Brands such as Audi, BMW and Mercedes still go for that approach, while for the real space giants it is better to turn to the bread-and-butterbrands.

Was the Audi 80 Avant not practical then? Well, still. For example, you could use up to 430 liters of luggage space in the sedan version, but if you packed the 80 Avant up to the roof, it was good for 650 liters. Quite a difference. Another big advantage was that you could fold down the rear seat in unequal parts, thus freeing up a gaping hole in space. Then there was 1,200 liters of space available. In addition, the 80 Avant with 500 kilos could also be loaded 90 kilos heavier than the sedan. Nevertheless, the 80 Avant did not immediately invite to be used as a pack mule, we found: “By the way, the window in the back is covered with such neat velvet that you wouldn’t dare to put a case of beer on it, for fear of crushing the beautiful material. Maybe Audi has taken the tidiness a bit too far here.”

Once on the road with the Audi 80 Avant, we noticed that you didn’t have to make any concessions in terms of driving noises in the interior, sometimes called a plus of a sedan compared to a station wagon. The handling was also comparable, which the 80 Avant owed, according to the test editor, to efforts by Audi to make it stiffer. What we could not suspect at the time was that the Audi 80 Avant would become the basis for the heaviest 80 ever; the RS2 Avant. With this Audi gave the starting signal in 1994 for a long tradition of blood-fast Avants, which still continues with the current RS4 Avant. All in all, we can therefore speak of the beginning of an era with the arrival of the Audi 80 Avant.