Audi Australia works on case for hot models

AUDI Australia is confident it will follow its Volkswagen Group stablemates by reclassifying this market’s climate designation, opening the door for more potent versions of its current line-up – and future models – to arrive here.

Audi Australia corporate communications manager Shaun Cleary told GoAuto this week that the company, which operates separately from Volkswagen Group Australia (VGA), was working with head office to reclassify Australia’s climate to allow more powerful engine tunes here.

“We’ve been having conversations with Audi AG in Germany for quite a while around power output compared to some of those outputs in Europe; we’re working quite closely with their engineers (and have been) since around 2015,” he said.

“And while we don’t have anything to announce yet, we’re pretty confident that we’re going to have some good news towards the end of next year.”

Mr Cleary would not specify which models were in line to come to Australia with a reclassification, however GoAuto understands there could be a range of powertrains and models under consideration.

Mr Cleary also pointed to the high take-up rate of performance vehicles in Australia as a strong basis for the discussions with Germany.

Just as Volkswagen’s most obvious candidate for enhancement is the Golf R hot hatch, which is available with a 228kW power output overseas (up from 213kW in Australia), Audi’s is the S3 sedan and hatch that use the same engine.

While VGA is planning to wait until the new-generation Golf R before switching to the higher-output engine, Mr Cleary said that in Audi’s case, the company would try to introduce any powertrain upgrades as soon as possible.

As GoAuto has reported, VGA last week revealed that it and group partner Skoda Australia will benefit from a decision by Volkswagen Group to reclassify Australia’s climate from ‘hot and dusty’ to ‘moderately hot’.

Volkswagen’s case was supported by showing national heat maps and average temperature by region, making it clear that the majority of vehicles purchased Down Under are not being driven in typically ‘hot and dusty’ areas such as central and north-west Australia.

As reported, changing the climate designation has already opened the door for Skoda’s Kodiaq RS SUV, which uses a 176kW/500Nm 2.0-litre twin-turbo diesel engine.