2026 Audi A6 allroad | PH Review

Big chassis, big look, big shoes to fill - can the new wide-body allroad go places its predecessor didn't?

By Nic Cackett / Friday, 2 October 2026 / Loading comments

The Audi A6 allroad enjoyed a fine reputation among car hacks. Or the older ones did at least. The cleverness of the all-season, all-terrain concept arguably culminated in the C7, which was everything that put upon journalists, forced to roam the nation’s motorway networks at all hours, liked very much. Fast, economical, comfy, roomy, plainly well-made and handsome in a way that attracted virtually no attention, it was like the Clark Kent of German cars. If you knew, you knew. For a good long while it popped up on a lot of three-car garage wishlists. But Audi fluffed its lines with the C8 replacement by making it look just like an A6. Only worse.

That Audi had lost interest is understandable. The original point of the A6 allroad was to supply buyers with a stylish wagon that could do (mostly) everything a proper SUV could, but didn’t lumber you with the questionable estate-agent-made-good image. Worked, too: Charlie-boy famously had a few, which automatically meant you could go grouse shooting in one. Or to a wedding in a cathedral. But at some point in the last decade, everyone forgot about luxury SUVs being passé and jumped in with both feet, making the allroad seem like the answer to a question no one was asking.

But that was then and this is now. Today’s SUV market, while ostensibly still booming, is arguably muddied by cheap Chinese knock-offs at one end and six-figure, battery-powered legacy models that apparently no one wants at the other. Fertile ground, then, for a segment-bending third way, especially for an estate car that looks and sounds the part. Hence the flagrantly wider body (think RS6-wide) draped over the new C9 allroad and the bespoke air suspension propping up its glinty alloys. And, not for nothing, the unfamiliar, fabulous way ‘V6 TDI’ sounds in your head when encountered on an Audi spec sheet.

Ingolstadt had not completely banished the configuration from its repertoire - or not elsewhere in Europe, anyway - but it has become vanishingly rare in the UK. One suspects its return in the allroad was irresistible: the underlying pitch, after all, is much the same as it ever was - this is a big wagon for people with things to do. Important, worthwhile things that don’t involve them doom-scrolling at a public charger. Things that make 428lb ft of torque and 47.9mpg look very appealing. You can have a plug-in petrol hybrid, too, of course, which will provide you with 367hp and up to 63 miles of EV range. But that’s a four-pot. So you don’t want that.

Whether or not you want the new allroad at all will likely come down to how taken you are with its appearance. Audi has long been on a mission to make the estate car cool again (see the new RS5 for evidence of its progress), although the steps taken to distinguish the ruggedised model from a conventional A6 are dramatic even by these standards. The new allroad is fully 11cm (yes, centimetres) wider than the current Avant. Its track widths are roughly 74mm broader. Subtle, it is not. Or indeed appealing from every angle in the buttoned-down manner of the C7. But when Audi calls the newcomer ‘muscular’ it is not indulging in hyperbole.

Given the damp squib it replaces, the reasoning is solid enough - and though it may share the wide-body design with the incoming RS6, the 34mm default ride height increase over a standard A6 means it is unlikely anyone is going to mistake you for an Audi Sport owner. But with its model-specific, gloss black wheel arch trim and serrated side skirts - not to mention the optional 21-inch alloys fitted to every test car in Corsica, and the (yes, functional) air vents carved out of the bulbous front wings - there’s the very real impression of an estate car doing everything possible to turn the vertical presence of an SUV on its side. It is as commandingly horizontal as Kim Kardashian.

The exterior is sufficiently interesting that the interior ranks as something of a disappointment by comparison. It is merely a high-spec A6 inside, which means it’s fine as far as it goes, though the layout is still more notable for its various shortcomings than its basic strengths. Namely: the switchgear (such as it is) feels cheap, the adjoining plastic surround looks cheap; the screens are too many, yet the choice of instrument panel views is too few. Audi appears terminally incapable of putting a drive mode button in an appropriate position, and has doubled down on this approach by moving so many features to the door panel that your eyes - which definitely have better things to do while driving - need about 40 minutes to make a selection.

Not to harp on about the C7, which was not faultless by any means - but even distant memory of it is warm and fuzzy, not least for the reassuringly expensive click that everything made. Nothing about the C9 is memorable at all. Save for the fact that beyond its inconsistencies, it is roomy and very comfortable and appreciably well-equipped, which it should be for a starting price of £69,720 for the Black Edition. Still, you can console yourself with the idea that Audi is charging you a premium for what’s underneath rather than what’s been carried over in the cabin.

The adaptive air suspension, still based on multi-link axles front and rear, is said to have been specifically developed for the allroad, delivering a height variability of 55mm - although this includes the 20mm it will descend closer to the ground if you exceed 75mph. Select offroad mode and you get 15mm more ground clearance than standard - sufficient, one imagines, to overcome anything an allroad owner is likely to tackle - though there is an additional ‘lift’ mode that gains you an extra 20mm at speeds of up to 21mph. If you actually are on anything more challenging than a gravel driveway, there’s an offroad+ setting that gets the diff lock more readily involved and permits more slip from the traction control.

But for most people - or for most of the time anyway - the real benefit of the allroad’s raised suspension has traditionally been a more permissive approach to damping than Audi is inclined to take elsewhere. The new model defaults to a ‘Balanced’ mode on startup, and while that is a reasonable summation of its efforts, there is always a sense that the chassis is using its additional latitude to make a better job of ironing out the road surface than a conventional air-sprung Avant might. Not in a wallowy sense, or in a way that particularly evokes the waft of a luxury saloon - rather the C9’s wheel control is measured somewhere in between the two, and for the most part (given the mission-defeating absurdity of attaching 21s), it is very persuasive.

Despite ‘extensively’ reworking its standard-fit progressive steering setup, which included improving the rigidity of the rack and control arm bushings, alongside the adjustments made to the camber at the front, the allroad is not a particularly communicative thing to pedal - although, as ever with Audi, you do wonder how much of this is by design; its engineers favouring ease-of-use and a one-dimensional sort of assurance over anything resembling feedback. Nevertheless, it is plenty accurate enough, and with all-wheel steering complementing the chassis’s super-sized footprint (the allroad gets wider tyres, too), the car’s hold on the road is pretty much non-negotiable anyway.

Or it is when you’ve only got 299hp to push against it. The new TDI motor is surprisingly strident with its gravelly impression of a diesel engine from 20 years ago, but functionally speaking, it is as modern as a Banksy canvas. Its mild-hybrid status incorporates a belt alternator starter and 48V battery, along with an electrically powered compressor - the latter supplying 24hp of additional power, although its role in suppressing turbo lag is possibly more notable. (Though you will also notice its whiney recuperation of energy during deceleration, too.) Audi reckons the V6 is good for 62mph in 5.4 seconds, which sounds mildly optimistic in a car that weighs 2.2 tonnes with a driver aboard. But it is obligingly alert and predictably well-matched to the allroad’s can-do attitude.

This facet, much as it ever was, is the model’s secret sauce. Somewhat unexpectedly given the location, its maker opted not to include any off-road driving in Corsica, which is a shame because spirited entries and exits from umpteen shingly lay-bys suggest the electronically controlled quattro system is configured to treat any time spent on the loose as recreational. Regardless, the car’s USP ends up being less about its physical capabilities (where ground clearance is ultimately the determining factor anyway), and more about the liberating mindset it confers. No allroad owner ever grimaced at a sleeping policeman or moon-crater road surfacing; all are benignly conquered.

And at pace too, if you wish. Audi’s assembled talking heads pointed out that one benefit of having so much more suspension travel to play with was the leeway it offered in differentiating the drive modes. In Corsica, this seemed less apparent in the variance between Balanced and Comfort, and more prominent in Dynamic, where the car hunkers down 20mm no matter what speed you’re doing. As you might expect, this enhances the lateral body control, though (on admittedly smooth roads) didn’t seem to subtract much from the allroad’s supple primary ride. Which, unusually for anything its maker label’s as ‘dynamic’, might just make it the ideal compromise for some very brisk A-to-B-ing in the UK.

The TDI is a willing enough companion in this performance-wise, although anyone particularly interested in a cheaper, comfier, fast-heeled clone of the imminent RS6 (and let’s face it, who wouldn’t be?), would be advised to hold their horses. While the allroad launches in its sensible shoes, early next year Audi will sneak the current S5’s 362hp petrol V6 into the lineup. And on this evidence, that introduction might well result in the kind of all-court Q-wagon that tends to make motoring journalists - and more than a few PHers - adopt a thumb-sucking foetal position when thinking about. Alternatively, if you’ve simply been waiting patiently for Audi to replace the diesel C7 with something even half as good - and the £10k premium over a regular A6 Avant is no impediment - you can start rejoicing immediately. The allroad is back.

Specification | 2026 Audi A6 allroad TDI quattro

Engine: 2967cc, V6 diesel, turbocharged
Transmission: Seven-speed S tronic, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 299 @ 3,620-3,750rpm
Torque (lb ft): 428 @ 1,500-3,620rpm
0-62mph: 5.4 secs
Top speed: 155mph
Weight: 2,120kg (unladen)
MPG: 46.3-47.9mpg (combined)
CO2: 154-159g/km
Price: £69,720 (Vorsprung, £81,520)