Audi Q3: Production starts in Spain

Audi Q3 - production has started in Spain

The Audi Q3 is the latest niche-filler from Audi, another soft-roader to mop up the seemingly endless queue of buyers wanting something high-riding and rufty-tufty.

And if that high-riding something that’s a little rufty-tufty just happens to have a decent badge attached and comes complete with plenty of grown-up toys, so much the better.

Which is why Audi has high expectations of its new Q3, with the SEAT plant in Martorell, Spain gearing up to churn out as many as 100,000 Q3s a year. Which means cars for an awful lot of entry-level yummie-mummies to come.

As we revealed last month, the entry-level price for the Audi Q3 is £24,560, which will buy you a Q3 2.0 TDI SE, and goes up to a steep-ish £31,360 for the 2.0 TFSI S-Line.

It’s hard to believe that Audi have only really been building SUVs of any description for a handful of years, and yet the Q3 is expected to account for pushing on ten per cent of Audi’s annual output from 2012.

Despite the first Audi Q3 rolling off the production line today – and order books for the Q3 opening in the UK – Audi say it will be November before the first customers get their cars, and December if you’ve gone for the peasant’s option of 2WD.

And if you’ve gone for the 2Wd you’d better hope we don’t have any heavy snowfall this year, or you’re going to look a little silly in your posh new Q3.

Unless you’re smart and fit winter tyres.

(32 photos – click any thumbnail for full gallery)

By Cars UK