The Audi SQ2 Quattro has proved itself a credible, fairly rounded performance car during our test processes, delivering a healthy quantity of driver appeal: more of that last factor, certainly, than you might have expected to get if you’d written this off as just another opportunistic, marketing department-driven Audi S-car.
By landing four stars, it beats by half-a-star what the Cupra Ateca managed a couple of months ago. The Audi handles better than its Spanish rival, with more balance and even a bit of involvement when you go looking for it. It works better on the road, too, and has a simpler, more energetic character than the Ateca with which it’s easier to engage.
What the car gains by being smaller and lighter than the crossover norm, mind you, must be set against what it loses on practicality. This certainly isn’t a particularly comfortable four-seater for full-sized adult occupants – and that fact only brings its value proposition further into question as a near-£40,000 car with the de rigueur options.
Still, if the job of a performance car is to be fast, composed and fun to drive first and foremost, the Audi SQ2 makes a better one than any crossover hatchback has so far.
