Of the four body styles in which Audi offers the A3, the one with the least obvious appeal to buyers in this country is the Saloon. UK motorists have held hatchbacks in a warm embrace for many years now, and while it is no part of the CARkeys ethos to encourage gambling I wouldn't blame you if you risked a small flutter on regular A3s outselling Saloons here by a wide margin.Personally, I quite like the saloon shape in general, and in this specific case I think it makes this the best-looking of all A3s. A wiser designer might have made the rear pillars narrower to allow you to see out of the damn thing when you're looking over your shoulder, but apart from that the Saloon seems rather attractive to me, in a slightly-squished-A4 sort of way.The practicality situation is common to most saloons. The boot has a volume of 425 litres, and is therefore quite a bit larger than that of the regular A3, or indeed most other hatchbacks on the market with the exception of the Honda Civic, Skoda Rapid and Skoda Octavia.The downside, however, is that there isn't much of a gap between the rather high load sill and the base of the rear window, so it might be tricky to load a large, solid-sided object. And although the rear seats can be folded down, luggage space in this configuration is a relatively mere 880 litres, the limitation being that the rear window can't be moved.Another thing about that window: it doesn't have a wiper. This is almost always the case with saloon cars, and the reasoning (sound enough as far as it goes) is that their rear windows don't get as dirty as those of estate cars and hatchbacks. But they do get equally wet, so despite convention they need wipers. Audi should fit one.The engine in the test car was the familiar 148bhp 2.0 TDI fitted to a large number of Volkswagen Group cars. The official combined fuel economy and CO2 figures are 68.9mpg and 107g/km (so £20 per year in Vehicle Excise Duty from year two onwards), and it should be possible to achieve something in the mid to high 40s mpg in normal motoring.These are impressive numbers, but all of them are beaten by the more powerful, heavier and presumably less aerodynamically efficient Volkswagen Golf GTD. I'd like to give you a good reason for this, but to be honest I'm stumped.I'd also like to write about what the A3 Saloon is like to drive, but after some thought I'm not going to. The test car was fitted with optional 19" wheels and low-profile tyres, and unless your sole intention in choosing these is to make the car look better (which they do) they are a complete waste of £1495. The conflict between them and the suspension has such a severe effect on the ride and handling that it simply wouldn't be fair to judge the car in this condition. But I will suggest that you stick with the standard wheels and tyres.The wretched 19s and the silly rubber fitted to them helped bump up the car's price from a reasonable £24,275 (the least Audi will charge you for an A3 Saloon with this engine and manual transmission) to £35,600. Some of the other optional extras which made their own contribution are fair game, such as the £575 adaptive cruise control and £750 Bang & Olufsen audio system.On the other hand, £2000 for LED lighting seems a bit much, and I'm surprised that, on a premium compact car, things like front and rear parking sensors (£595) and the package consisting of automatic headlights and wipers and an auto-dimming interior mirror (£395) aren't part of the standard specification. Engine 1968cc, 4 cylinders Power 148bhp Transmission 6-speed manual Fuel/CO2 68.9mpg / 107g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 8.7 seconds Top speed 136mph Price £24,275 Details correct at publication date
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