Audi A6 Avant long-term test: report 5

Needs to Soothe on a long motorway commute without costing the earth on fuel; be endlessly versatile without being annoyingly cumbersome

Mileage 5290 List price £53,530 Target Price £49,273 Price as tested £57,210 Official fuel economy 36.2 mpg Test fuel economy 40.9 mpg 

4 August 2024 – Just let me drive

I rather enjoy how my Audi A6 Avant handles on my flowing local roads. However, my driving pleasure is greatly increased when I press the little black button that's conveniently placed right at the end of the indicator stalk. When I hold this down for a few seconds, the digital dashboard displays 'Lane departure warning: off'. As a result, this is now the second thing I do after getting behind the wheel, after pressing the start button.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no luddite when it comes to driver-assistance tech. Indeed, my previous car, a Lexus RZ, proved that facilities such as lane-keeping assistance (LKA) can be a real boon when properly implemented; the way that car faithfully followed my lane on the M25 really helped me to relax on my lengthy commute. My A6 doesn't have LKA, nor adaptive cruise control (this isn't available with my car's Sport trim level – you need to step up to S line and pay £1950 extra for the Tour Pack), but the lane departure warning system does more to hinder than to help.

Its job is, obviously, to prevent me from leaving my lane and entering the path of oncoming traffic or colliding with roadside obstacles, and it does this by reading the road markings. The problem comes when those markings disappear. In my neck of the woods, there are plenty of roads that are wide enough for two cars to pass, but which don't have centre lane markings, and the car interprets these roads as single lanes. Of course, what I want to do here is keep left, but the car makes repeated efforts to fight against my steering inputs and bring us into the centre of the lane.

I'd much rather the system admit defeat and switch itself off when there's no dotted centre line. Then I could enjoy the A6's pleasingly weighted steering without the steering wheel squirming in my hands of its own accord.

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