2005 Audi allroad Test Drive

Who Needs An SUV?

You can treat the Allroad Quattro like an SUV, but it's more like a performance car with lots of room.

The Audi Allroad Quattro can handle rutted, muddy roads of the Colorado Rockies with the best SUVs. It's a  really nice station wagon with the offroad surefootedness of a mountain goat wearing crampons.

The Allroad looks like the kind of sensible car you could pick up the kids in, but thanks to a pneumatic suspension that lets the driver raise the car to a ground clearance of 8.2 inches, the Allroad is as competent off road as it is on the Interstate. (By the way, it takes about three seconds to adjust the ride height, and this can be achieved even when the car is moving. Otherwise the Allroad will spend most of its life with 6.6 inches of ground clearance and then automatically lower itself to 5.6 inches at 75 mph.)

Of course, very few Americans actually ever go driving off into the wilderness -- particularly when their car cost them more than $40,000. Which is why luxury SUVs such as the Lexus RX300, Infiniti QX4, Mercedes-Benz ML 320 and BMW X5 are first designed to have a car-like ride on asphalt. They also provide sumptuous interiors with lots of room and that all-important above-the-fray perspective.

The Allroad can offer all of this, save that tall truck point of view. This is no truck. It's a car with as much (or more) interior space as any of the aforementioned vehicles and a lower center of gravity that lets it out-corner any of those taller SUVs with near sports car-like poise. Combine that kind of road feel with a 250-hp twin-turbo six and you have the definition of functional fun, a car that has speed to burn, grip in spades and room to spare. Who needs an SUV?