Audi Named ‘Highest Premium Brand’ for 2012 Ideal Vehicle Awards
Earlier this week, Audi achieved the distinction of ‘Highest Premium Brand’ as named by Autobytel and AutoPacific’s 2012 Ideal Vehicle Awards (IVA). Helping Audi win this award is the fact that the brand swept the Aspirational Luxury Car category with the 2012 Audi A4, A5, and A6. The 2012 Audi Q5 and Q7 also made their presence known in the crossover SUV categories.
The IVA surveyed over 75,000 car and light truck owners to find out if their vehicle met their expectations and desires based on the purchase. The awards are designed to help consumers make informed decisions with a true peer-to-peer survey. Scoring of vehicles is based on vehicle attributes that owners want the least amount of change on. These attributes include exterior styling, exterior size, passenger spaciousness, cargo space, driver’s seat comfort, driver’s seat visibility, info/entertainment technology, interior lighting, power and acceleration, ease of getting in and out, interior storage compartments, ride, handling, safety features and tires and wheels.
The Audi A4, A5, and A6 took top honors in the Aspirational Luxury Car category and they are the only cars in the category to offer quattro® all-wheel drive. In the 2012 Audi A4 and A5, the award-winning 2.0 TFSI® engine provides 211 horsepower and 258 lb-ft. of torque and combines Audi valvelift system, variable valve timing and TFSI direct injection. Design refinements give the A4 and A5 model-line athletic elegance, most noticeably with the available unmistakable Audi xenon plus lighting with LED daytime running lights and tail lamps. Available convenience technologies, such as Audi MMI® Navigation plus and Audi music interface, add pure enjoyment to the driving experience. Entertainment is provided by an Audi six-channel stereo system with ten speakers, or an available Bang & Olufsen® 505 – watt, 14 speaker sound system.
The award-winning 2012 Audi A6 boasts an all-aluminum 3.0 L TFSI supercharged V6 engine with 310 horsepower. One of Audi’s most innovative and technologically-advanced models to date, the A6 makes up to 2,000 decisions per second to assist the driver. Safety in the all-new Audi A6 is enhanced by a thermal imaging camera with Night Vision Assistant, the Audi Pre-Sense Plus safety system and quattro all-wheel drive technology. Other intelligent features include head-up display and a MMI Touch pad that recognizes handwriting in multiple languages. Audi is the first company worldwide to feature factory-installed wireless internet, enabling features such as Audi connect™ for real-time weather, traffic news and live fuel prices, and MMI Navigation with 3D Google Earth™ images.
