Audi A4 Avant estate - Reliability & safety (2015-2024)

Naturally, reliability and safety are key selling points for premium-brand cars like the A4 Avant and it provides a pretty impressive amount of standard safety equipment. Despite the A4 Avant feeling very solid and Audi being a respected and desirable brand, our 2021 Driver Power customer satisfaction survey indicates that the Audi ownership experience still isn't perfect.

Audi A4 Avant reliability

The Audi A4 could only manage a 65th place finish in our 2021 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey of the top 75 cars currently on sale in the UK due only going on sale earlier this year. Audi’s performance as a brand was slightly underwhelming, finishing in 23rd place out of 29 manufacturers, below other premium brands, with 16% of owners reporting a fault within the first year.

Electrical and build quality issues were cited as the most likely problems by owners, who were also unhappy with running costs. Audi owners praised the brand’s engines and liked the interior quality and technology of their cars.

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Safety

You get a pretty decent amount of standard safety equipment with the A4 Avant, with the key active systems being ‘pre-sense city braking’ and ‘multi-collision brake assist’. The former uses a variety of sensors to detect obstacles and take necessary action to avoid a collision, while the latter puts the brakes on in the aftermath of a crash to reduce the possibility of a secondary impact. There are six airbags as standard, too, as well as electronic stability control, parking sensors and anti-lock brakes.

There’s a pretty extensive list of optional safety equipment, too. You can add things like lane-keeping assistance (which helps keep you in lane on the motorway if you drift toward the lines without indicating) and adaptive cruise control (which can maintain a safe distance from the car in front on the motorway or in stop-start traffic).

You can also specify features such as parking assistance, which steers the car into a space for you while you do the accelerating and braking. Cross traffic assist monitors the rear of the car when you’re reversing out of a parking space or driveway and warns if a car is about to cross behind you.

There are also options like Audi side assist (which warns if there’s a car in your blind spot when changing lanes on the motorway) and exit warning, which can tell if there’s anything coming up behind you as you prepare to get out of the car.

Euro NCAP gave the latest Audi A4 saloon – on which this Avant estate is based – its maximum five-star crash-safety score when it tested it in November 2015.