Plenty of Rear Passenger Space - 2015 Audi A3 Long-Term Road Test

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Plenty of Rear Passenger Space - 2015 Audi A3 Long-Term Road Test

The Audi A3 is the smallest sedan in the company's lineup but it still offers a surprisingly spacious rear seat.

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mrryte

Out of curiousity; what's the rear legroom of the CLA?

faztang1

Only problem is that the manufactures numbers are meaningless because they all measure differently. My Nissan Murano says rear leg room is 36.3 inches. I sat in an A4 and I can tell you for a fact that the Murano has WAY more than 1 inch of leg room. It's all about where the front seat is set. And how many people actually slide the front seat all the way up to the steering wheel? Let's be honest the A3 and A4 both have rear seats meant for kids at most. I'm only 5' 8" and I got stuck in the back of an A4 for a road trip. Horrible experience.

PF_Flyer

Having driven mostly compacts for some time now, rear seat room with 2 kids in the neighborhood of 6' tall has been important to us. Even our new Versa Note has 38.3" of rear seat leg room. Nice to see some manufacturers remembering that the real world often has rear passengers!

pqlyur1

Aren't rear wheel drive cars generally less efficient at rear seat room efficiency than front wheel drive cars?

seppoboy

Rear seat room dimensions by themselves do not always tell the whole story. Despite the seemingly insignificant measurement differences, I find the A4 rear seat to be barely tolerable, the A3 to be not tolerable, and the 3-series to be adequately comfortable. Golf back seat seems much better to me than A3, and a lot more comfortable than the apparently similar Mazda 3. I preferred A4 and would have been happy with a Volvo V60, but bought a BMW 328xd instead simply because my passengers clearly had much better room and comfort in the 3-series, even one of my shorter friends would not tolerate the A3, which I wasn't really considering anyhow. The printed dimensions are not that different for all of these cars, but in the real world they do very different jobs accommodating real live passengers.

s197gt

i sat in an A3 at the auto show this week and in the rear seat the top of my (somewhat spiky) hair was hitting the headliner. i am 5'8". going to DEEtroit in January; hopefully they have an S3 at the NAIAS.

emajor

At six feet tall, I can sit behind myself in this car without my knees hitting the seatback. Roof's a tad low and the car isn't wide. Fine for around town. Not much more you can ask out of the smallest sedan in the lineup.

PF_Flyer

emajor said:

At six feet tall, I can sit behind myself in this car without my knees hitting the seatback. Roof's a tad low and the car isn't wide. Fine for around town. Not much more you can ask out of the smallest sedan in the lineup.

That's my test. I've got long legs and generally will have the driver's seat all the way back in virtually any vehicle. Our Versa and Versa Note are the first cars in a long time where I can sit behind my driver's seat position with room to spare.
Those rear legroom numbers aren't so much absolutes because of driver seat variations, but at least they give you a standard for comparison.

Kinda like "your mileage may vary" for interiors

chol92594

I'd be curious to see if the hatchback is any different in terms of legroom. Obviously, it would help solve the problem of the sedan's somewhat small trunk capacity (although is practically shaped), but I wonder if Audi moved the seats back at all, since they had more cargo space to work with when designing the hatchback.

PF_Flyer

chol92594 said:

I'd be curious to see if the hatchback is any different in terms of legroom. Obviously, it would help solve the problem of the sedan's somewhat small trunk capacity (although is practically shaped), but I wonder if Audi moved the seats back at all, since they had more cargo space to work with when designing the hatchback.

I don't think it's "once you go hatch you never go back", but we've been very pleased with nothing but hatchbacks in our driveway for the last 8 years