Audi A6
Published · Researched 2026-09-21
The Audi A6 spent 2023 dead last in its class for reliability and 2025 comfortably mid-pack. Same car, same engines, same screens. If that sentence doesn't tell you everything about modern luxury-car ownership — that the hardware is fine and the software is the car — nothing will.
The C8 A6 (2019–2025) is the quiet executive: quattro all-wheel drive, mild-hybrid everything, a dual-touchscreen cabin, and engines from the 204 hp 2.0-liter to the 340 hp 3.0 V6, plus diesels and plug-in hybrids Europe actually buys. Note the 2025 split: an all-new C9 combustion A6 launched alongside the electric A6 e-tron, so 2025–2026 cars are a clean sheet with zero owner evidence. Everything below is the C8, which is where all the data lives.
What's genuinely good is the reason the A6 keeps selling despite the surveys: it's a magnificent long-distance tool. Owners consistently praise the ride, the cabin materials, the refinement at speed — "a robust long-distance cruiser" is the phrase that recurs. The diesels return real-world economy nothing in this cluster touches, the quattro system is fit-and-forget, and the interior has aged better than the BMW's and the Mercedes' glitz. When nothing's broken — which, to be fair, is most of the time for most owners — it's the rationalist's choice and it feels like it.
What's actually wrong is almost entirely electronic, and the numbers are stark. What Car?'s 2023 survey: last of 24 executive cars, 76.3%, with 44% of owners reporting a fault — two-thirds electrical or infotainment. The dual-screen MMI freezes, blacks out, and reboots; a dead MIB3 unit costs €1,500–2,500 at a dealer. The 2.0 TFSI drinks oil and wears its timing chain tensioner; the 3.0T has turbo durability questions; the 7-speed S tronic hesitates and can kill its mechatronic unit (€2,000–3,500). Diesels add starter-generator moisture faults and AdBlue grief. Front suspension bushings wear out at 80,000–120,000 km, and Audi sells the arms as integrated units — €1,200–1,500 at a dealer. RepairPal: 2.5 out of 5, $987 a year on average. Skip this car if you can't produce a full dealer service history, if you're buying a 2019–2021 without a warranty, or if your tolerance for screen reboots is zero. The survey's own footnote is the buying guide: 97% of faults were fixed free and none cost over £200 — under warranty. Out of warranty is a different country.
The social pulse is the most interesting arc in this cluster: from "last place, avoid" to "90.2%, 14th of 23" in two years. Owners didn't suddenly fall in love; the early cars aged out of the sample and the software matured. The debate now is whether the recovery is real or statistical, and the honest answer is both — the car got better and the sample got kinder. The C9 launch has everyone watching to see if Audi learned anything.
Value call: a 2023–2024 C8 with full history is the buy — the facelift years, the software at its most mature, depreciation already brutal. The 40 TDI is the pick for motorway miles if the starter-generator recall is documented; the 45 TFSI for everyone else. Early 2019–2021 cars are cheap for a reason — price in the electronics. New C9 cars start around €58,000 in Europe and ~$57,900 in the US (both UNVERIFIED), and with no owner data they're a leap of faith Audi hasn't earned yet. Against the 5 Series and E-Class: the A6 is the cheapest to buy used, the nicest inside, and the one most likely to need a software update on a Tuesday.
The tradeoff, in the survey's own terms: a superb cruiser wrapped around the industry's most educational infotainment system. Buy late, buy documented, and keep the warranty.