Niche baby Audis abound

AUDI’S new A3 Cabriolet is the second of a three-tiered four-seater convertible assault by the Volkswagen Group marque after the release in 2002 of the A4 Cabriolet.

It will be followed in the next four years by a soft-top version of the as-yet unreleased A1, Audi’s weapon against BMW’s all-conquering Mini.

A 2+2-seater A1 Cabrio is expected some time in about 2012, some two years after the hatchback donor car goes on sale in 2010. The latter is believed to be in development as both a three-door as well as a five-door hatch.

Audi has already announced that Brussels, Belgium, will be the production site for the new A1.

Further details of the A1 Cabrio are sketchy, but the Metroproject concept car unveiled at the Tokyo motor show in 2007 is extremely close to what the hatchback version will look like, according to one Audi insider.

However, in order to save weight, reduce cost and complexity, and meet ever-stringent fuel consumption and emissions requirement, we believe that the A1 Cabrio will use a fabric roof rather than the folding hard-top, just like its big brothers.

With both the A1 hatch and cabrio, Audi’s intention is to hijack the fledgling premium baby segment dominated since 2001 by the Mini, gate-crashed by the Fiat 500 and soon to be joined by the Alfa Mi-To.

The Mini Cabrio, launched in 2004, has been a huge success for BMW and will undergo the same complete overhaul next year as the R56 hatch model did in late 2006.

Speculation suggests that Fiat is also working on a drop-top version of its brand-lifting 500. Alfa may follow suit if the Mi-To – based on the (Grand) Punto platform – takes off.

With its roof up, the A1 Cabrio is believed to be quite similar in silhouette to the A3 Cabrio, but proportionally considerably smaller.

At the Tokyo show last year, A1/Metroproject concept project exterior designer Jürgen Löffler told GoAuto that the A1 is a “two-and-a-half-box” shape – much like the A3 Cabrio – in order to “...make it a little more unique”.

Reports are conflicting as to whether the A1 will be built on the next-generation Volkswagen Polo platform (PQ25), or whether Audi will use a cut-down version of the next A3’s all-new MQB modular transverse matrix architecture in order for it to offer all-wheel drive as well as front-wheel drive.

The latter is more likely, especially as the Metroproject concept (renamed the A1 Project Quattro when showed at the Leipzig Auto Mobil International event in Germany earlier this year) made much of its AWD running gear, as well as the S-Tronic dual-clutch gearbox (formerly DSG) and hybrid drivetrain featuring an electric motor and a 1.4-litre turbocharged and supercharged four-cylinder engine. This drivetrain has been devised to work within the MQB structure.

AWD would also be necessary if the rumoured S1 high-performance version of the A1 sees the light of day, since all of Audi’s ‘S’ cars employ AWD under the ‘quattro’ brand.

Audi will be very industrious in the next five years.

Worldwide, it is striving to hit the one million unit sales mark in 2008, with around 1.5 million annual sales slated by 2015 in order to overhaul compatriots BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

To realise these goals, the Ingolstadt brand will continue to roll out new segment players such as the A1 hatch, A1 Cabrio and S1.

Audi will reportedly also vastly expanded its next-generation A3 range from 2010, to include four-door sedan and Avant wagon variants, in order to better infiltrate the US, Asian and Indian markets, which prefer three-box sedans over the hatch designs favoured by Europeans and Australians.

Another future A3 spin-off will be the Q3 – said to share some of its underpinnings with the recently released Volkswagen Tiguan – that will usher Audi into the increasingly competitive luxury compact SUV class, just as the equally tireless BMW is readying the 1 Series-based X1 to fight in the same segment.

Small cars coming from Audi:
A3 Cabrio	July 2008
A3 MkIII	2010
A1	2010
A1 Cabrio	2012
S1	2012
Q3 SUV	2012