Sitting in traffic at 5 o’clock can be such a chore. Just like everybody else, you want to get home. Everybody is tired and impatient after a long day at work. As you get closer to the nearest onramp, you let traffic zipper together as roads converge. I was doing just this, when a unicorn pulls in front of me. I pull up my sunglasses and squint at the gleaming white splendor. Is that really what I think it is?! The silver gleam gives it away. It is an Audi Allroad, and as near as I can tell, it is brand new: temporary tags and all.
Is The Audi Allroad Really a Unicorn?
The Allroad doesn’t stay with me for long as it veers off in a different direction almost immediately. I am left pondering if I really saw an Audi Allroad. I have seen them before, but only ever the first generation. Did Audi bring it back after discontinuing it? Checking my own stats, I don’t think I have seen one newer than 2005, but the one that I just saw looks like it was made this year. After this sighting I can’t stop thinking about the car. As interesting as the discussion topics are on the radio, I keep thinking about the Audi. They have to have brought it back after being discontinued, because I just don’t see them.
As soon as I can, I look up the Audi Allroad online and am floored to find out that it has existed contiguously since the first generation in 1999. Sure enough, the first generation was last produced in 2005 with peak sales in 2001 and a steady decline after that. In total, only 32,015 of these cars were sold in the USA. Compare that to the 2.96 million Toyota Camry’s sold in the US during that same time, and the Audi Allroad Quattro only sold 1 car for every 100 Toyota Camry’s, let alone all of the other cars sold in the US.
What Happened After The 2005 Allroad?
If you look at the above chart of Audi Allroad Sales, you can see that compared to European Sales, US Allroad sales are barely a blip on the radar. The regular A6/S6 platform is outselling the Allroad in the US by about 10:1. For me, the really interesting part of the graph above is the big change in European sales that you see starting in 2004. It turns out that 2004 was a major face lift for the A6 platform in Europe, and it looks like it was well accepted. The now renamed A6 Allroad Quattro receives this new design in 2006. And here is the interesting part. I cannot find any US sales figures at all for the A6 Allroad Quattro. As near as I can tell, they just didn’t offer it here in the US.
The disappearance of the Audi is further corroborated by blog posts in Car and Driver. Someone at Audi must have been listening to complaints that they had discontinued their off-road station wagon, because they began to sell the A4 variant in the US in 2012. So for a US customer, you missed a whole generation of this car from 2006 to 2012. Now, for all the begging from US car journalists, do you think the A4 estate sold any better? The answer is no, it really hasn’t. Since 2012 Audi has only sold 18305 of it’s A4 Allroads, averaging about the same as the first generation.
Should I Go Out And Buy An Allroad While I Can?
In the current market, you need to ask yourself “what other vehicles compete with the Allroad?”. Well, if you are dead set on getting yourself an Audi, I think they make a good argument not to buy one. It turns out that the Q5 is probably a better purchase. If you just want to talk about off-road capability, the Q5 has a higher ground clearance and a larger gas tank. In price, the Q5 is cheaper. In power, the Q5 has a better power to weight ratio even with the same engine. After all of that, the Q5 even boasts better city gas mileage. The only thing the A4 Allroad really has going for it is styling, and in that you have to decide for yourself which one you like better.
It is no surprise that with all of that, people are buying the Q5 better than 10:1 over the Allroad in the US market. As a car enthusiast, though, I think there is another side to this coin. For only a few thousand more than what you would spend on a Q5, you could have something special. In 20 years when these cars become classics, the rarer car will have more value. And when you are thinking about going off road, don’t you want to take the road less traveled? If you pick up an Allroad right now, you won’t have to wait to turn heads, because guys like me will be staring at your car even now.