The 2026 Audi A6 Is Quicker Than It Has Any Business Being — Then It Hands You an iPad for a Dashboard

Audi redesigned the A6 for its ninth generation and, instead of saving the good numbers for an S-badge, just put them in the regular car. The standard powertrain is a 3.0-liter turbocharged V6 making 362 horsepower and 406 lb-ft of torque — up 27 hp and 37 lb-ft over the outgoing model — paired with a seven-speed dual-clutch and Quattro all-wheel drive for a 4.5-second 0-60 and an electronically capped 130 mph top speed, according to The Drive's first-drive testing. EPA ratings land at 20 city / 29 highway / 23 combined mpg. Base price is $65,395 including destination, with as-tested Sport Plus and Exclusive Design cars running $79,140 and $83,490 respectively. Those are numbers that used to require stepping up to something with a different letter on the trunk.

"The wise, sensible choice." — Jerry Perez, The Drive

Audi is also building a plug-in hybrid version of the new A6 for global markets, pairing a 2.0-liter turbo four with a 105 kW electric motor in two states of tune: a 295-hp version good for 0-62 mph in 6.0 seconds, and a higher-output 362-hp version — same number as the gas V6, coincidentally — that does it in 5.3, per Audi's own press materials. Both share a roughly 45%-larger 25.9 kWh battery (20.7 kWh usable) than the last-gen PHEV, good for up to 64 miles of electric-only range and a 155 mph top speed. None of the US first-drive coverage so far has touched the plug-in version, so treat it as a global-lineup footnote rather than confirmation of what's landing in American showrooms.

Inside, Audi went all-in on screens: an 11.9-inch digital gauge cluster and a 14.5-inch central touchscreen live under one shared curved panel angled toward the driver, with an optional 10.9-inch passenger display running its own apps independent of what the driver sees. The system runs on Android Automotive with Spotify and YouTube built in natively — no phone required to get either one working, which is a genuinely useful trick for a car this size.

The Drive's Jerry Perez landed at a 7/10 and called the result "the wise, sensible choice" among German sedans, praising the balance between comfort and something approaching actual engagement, and rating the cabin the best in its class. Capital One's reviewer largely agreed on how the A6 drives — "an engaging drive and a luxurious ride," with the V6 feeling "smooth" and power arriving "rapidly" — but landed somewhere very different on the screens, describing the shared-panel setup as "clumsy compared with the similar but far more elegant display configuration seen in recent BMWs," and dinging the driver display specifically for having "minimal customization or personality" — to the point that you "can't even pull up a map display" on the gauge cluster itself. J.D. Power split the difference: "A few rough edges in the powertrain and missing features in the technology experience leave the 2026 Audi A6 off to a good start, but with room for improvement."

Here's the thing nobody writing about this car seems to want to say outright: the powertrain story is the more interesting one, and it's getting buried under a cabin argument every screen-heavy German sedan launch has by now. Audi didn't need to build a halo car to make the entry-level A6 feel quick — that's a genuinely good engineering outcome, and it's the kind of number a brand usually reserves to sell you an upgrade. The touchscreen complaints, on the other hand, are earned on the merits, not just reflexive screen-hate: not being able to put a map on the driver display in a $65,000 car isn't a taste disagreement, it's a navigation feature Audi's own MMI system used to do fine before it got folded into one big shared panel. Buy the A6 for how it moves. Just know the dashboard is going to make you dig through a touchscreen to find the exit you already know is coming up.