Audi A1 | Shed of the Week

Twenty quid to tax and 70mpg combined? Not all Audi Sheds cost a fortune to run...

By Tony Middlehurst / Friday, 27 March 2026 / Loading comments

Another SOTW debut this week in the cute and pleasantly timeless shape of this Audi A1, the three-door 'luxury supermini' that previewed in 2007, launched as a three-door at the Geneva show in 2010, went on sale in the UK at the tail end of that year and was joined by a five-door Sportback version a year after that.

There was plenty of chat about the A1 when it came out. Audi dealers were rubbing their hands at the prospect of a small, cheap-to-run four-ringer as a second or third car. Here in the class-obsessed UK we played our part by buying lots of them. The result of that, you may be surprised to hear, is that the A1 is now the second most common Audi on the UK used market, beaten only by the A3, with more than 4,000 British A1s currently looking for a new home. As regards bodystyle, for every three-door you see, you'll find four five-doors.

The cheapest A1 Shed unearthed in the course of his research was just £999. That one had 170,000 miles on it and a noisy gearbox. Crash-repaired A1s with much lower mileages than that are available for £1,400, with non-Cat cars starting at £1,500, so our nineteen nine-y five Shed is actually one of the dearer bargain basement A1s.

The 2018-on, Spain-built, gen-two Sportback is still available new at RRPs of between £24k and £30k (£22k to £27k after discounts), but 2026 is going to be the A1's last year and there won't be a gen-three. The three-door didn't even make it to the gen-two. Nor did any of the three TDI diesels that it started off with on the global market, i.e. the 1.4, 1.6 and 2.0. That 1.6 diesel came in three flavours: 89hp/170lb ft, 114hp/184lb ft, or the midpoint, five-speed-manual-only 105hp/184lb ft car that we're looking at here. As a driving proposition, most reviewers preferred the lighter TSI petrol variants, but the 1.6 TDI was hardly lardy at 1,140kg so it mooched along at a reasonable rate, not quite making it into single figures for the 0-60mph run but eventually getting up to 118mph through its long-legged gears.

More importantly, especially now you might think, those gears helped the 105hp model to a headline fuel consumption figure of more than 70mpg, a number that by the end of 2014 had risen to over 80mpg. Eech, great days to be sure. Today, the 1.6 TDI's annual tax bill of just £20 has a much cheerier ring to it than Shed's normally glum reports, but there was nothing cheapskate about the standard of fit and finish, which was noticeably higher than that of rival manufacturers' superminis.

Our January 2012 Shed has done 138,000 miles, which might sound like a lot for a little car until you see that there are quite a few 150,000-mile+ cars in the classifieds. What about the MOT history though? Surely that must be a nightmare? Nope. Both rear springs were reported as corroded last April, along with some slight play in the front ARB balljoint and a worn front tyre. All these advisories were put right in time for the most recent test, which happened a couple of weeks ago, with no comments from the tester.

Owt else to worry about? Well, DPFs could get clogged if you didn't clog the diesels every now and then, but there again the turbos could go on the TSI petrols. Electronic problems weren't unknown (alarms, parking sensors, smartphone connections) and A1s have been popular with younger drivers. Shed will let you come to your own conclusions on that.

This car is a Sport, which is a fair choice for a 2026 buyer. It has firmer suspension, but not as firm as the jarringly tough S Line whose ride on 17-inch alloys rather cancelled out the niceties of its other add-ons like half-leather upholstery. The Sport came with 16-inch alloys, grippier than standard front seats, a leather steering wheel and handbrake lever, a USB port and Bluetooth.

Talking of which, the A1 is a modern car to Shed, so there's a lot of stuff in the spec that he isn't familiar with. He thought Bluetooth was a dental issue. He knows what a body coloured roof line is, having had one of those since his hair fell out after his scalp reacted badly to one of Mrs Shed's swishing saucepans. He's still stumped by the red garnet air vent sleeve, but a similarly named item that he found in a naughty underwear catalogue is currently winging its way to the postmistress. He was thinking of getting a wasabi green one for Mrs Shed but the farm said they couldn't afford the overtime.

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