Latest news with #AudiA2
Auto Car
5 days ago
- Automotive
- Auto Car
Matt Prior: I bought an Audi A2 for £500 – and it's brilliant
One of the things people love to say about the Audi A2 is that it was ahead of its time. It's the opinion people seem to hold most about the small Audi. And I get that: if you pulled the wraps from it today, it would still look modern. In October last year, Audi did just that, when it revealed the A2 E-tron concept restomod to celebrate the car's 25th anniversary, and it looked as fresh as a piglet. But if the A2 was 'ahead of its time', it must still be a long, long way ahead of its time, because more than a quarter of a century after it was launched, the world is not oversupplied with compact aluminium four-seaters that weigh less than 900kg and measure 3.8m long. No, instead the family car market is filled with very un-A2ish things: steel, heavy and crossovery. Influentially, and financially, the Audi A2 was a dead end. Audi sold just 176,000 of them globally over five years, at a time when Ford was selling 125,000 Focuses, in the UK alone, every year. The car that has come closest to following it, spiritually, was perhaps the BMW i3. BMW sold fewer than 25,000 of those a year too. And yet, and yet. What we once called Audi's 'nearly successful' A2 must have made a cultural impact because, believe me, people do like to talk about it. I've written about thousands of different cars over the years but my inbox has never known anything like the correspondence I've received since I bought an A2 in February. I've heard from the owners' club, talked with an owner who also has a McLaren F1, and heard from a guy who owns eight A2s. My car's previous owner was grateful I picked it up early, because he didn't want his mum to visit and see it was going. I still don't know enough about the A2, but I'm starting to see how it's adored. And it's easy to understand why.
BBC News
16-03-2025
- BBC News
Two women critical after A82 crash near beauty spot
Two women are in critical condition after a two-car crash on the A82 in Scotland said the collision, between a Ford Mondeo and an Audi A2, happened near the Falls of Falloch at about 13:40 on said a 35-year-old woman was taken to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow. A 60-year-old woman was also taken to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley following the incident, which happened between Ardlui and Crianlarich. PC Ian Marshall said: "Our inquiries are continuing to establish the cause of this crash. I would urge any witnesses or anyone with information to contact us."I would also ask any drivers on the road with dashcam from around the time of the crash to review their footage and please contact us if it holds anything relevant."
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
How aerodynamics have moved cars forward in the past 25 years
I've bought an Audi A2. It's a 2003 74bhp 1.4-litre diesel and, because it didn't have an MOT, it cost me £500. So far, I've fitted a new rear wheel bearing (£30), cleaned some mould from its crannies and sent it to be MOT tested. It failed only on headlight alignment and parking brake effectiveness, the latter perhaps because it has recently spent time sitting. By the time you read this, I hope to have sorted both, plus the sole advisory note about headlight cloudiness, meaning I will have a fully roadworthy, clean-MOTed A2 that the tester called 'really tidy' for less than £550. You will hear more about it, of course, in future, and no doubt I will bang on about it at length on the podcast (get it every Wednesday from etc and so on). But it's a photo from the previous owner, showing a return of 75mpg, that has got me thinking about just how efficient the A2 is – and could be. It's aluminium-structured and compact so has a kerb weight of only 960kg in this form. But while running a sponge over it, I reminded myself how the field of aerodynamics has moved on in the past quarter century. The A2 TDI had a drag coefficient of 0.28, which a special low-drag, big-economy edition managed to improve to 0.25. It took things like 145-section tyres and an underbody redesign to do that. Yet today, in cars that somehow don't look anything like so slippery, figures in the low 0.20s are increasingly common. On the face of it, the A2 looks a pretty efficient shape. The front is well rounded and the roof arches in a teardrop profile, which is the most aerodynamic shape there is. Cars could all be incredibly efficient if they were 12 metres long and tapered for a teardrop profile that would retain laminar air flow right along the body. But they're not, so air has to break clear of the body somehow, and to cleave it off quickly is better than prolonging its departure, which is why so many modern cars have boot-lip or rooftop spoilers. A rounded rear end promotes air swirling and creating little eddies, almost clinging to the body and adding drag. That car designers go to the trouble of aerodynamically sculpting rear light clusters shows how it's worth making even small improvements here. Especially with EVs, in which aerodynamics play a bigger part in the overall efficiency than in ICE cars, and because more drag doesn't just add fuel cost but charging time too. It's such little details that the old A2 doesn't have. Its door handles stick out, its windscreen wiper sits above the windscreen edge and there's (very subtle) body cladding. Practicality and regulations played their part too. The A2 has a little lip spoiler on its hatch, which could be more efficient if it were bigger, and could extend vertically down the sides of the car too, like the ones they put on the back of lorries. But that would make rear visibility even worse than it is and could have spoilt the lines of what I think is a very pretty little car. Ditto if the rear lights had been sculpted, rather than shaped to match the body: more efficient, less attractive. There are things Audi didn't do at the time, then, that it would feel almost compelled to do today, especially on a car marketed, as the A2 was, as technically clever and uber-efficient. Still, for a late-1990s design, it's hardly shabby. I haven't done the calculations, but there are estimates that it would take only 10bhp, plus or minus (probably plus) a couple, to propel an A2 on the flat at 60mph. Which sounds like not a lot until you remember that a hire go-kart, much lighter and smaller but much less slippery, will do about the same with similar power. I think making an A2 as slippery as possible would be a fun project: reshaping its spoilers, fairing-in its rear wheels, extending its bonnet and so on. Yes, I know that none of those things would make it as efficient as an EV. And save for fitting skinnier tyres, I'm not going to do any of them anyway. I'm just going to enjoy this little marvel for what it is. ]]>
