In city driving the bi-turbo boost sometimes answers accelerator pressure with a little more brio than wanted at the moment. Practice should temper that. On the highway, the engine's torque is mapped to suit demands for quick passes or sudden decisions. Coupled with the fingertip controls of the Tiptronic, and the instant response, those opportune short periods of dotted lines among the solid yellow can be taken advantage of with alacrity. It's rather fun.
Stretching the "all" of the allroad to meander off on a mere shelf of a rock-strewn dirt path on a Vail Valley mountainside demonstrates the versatility of the allroad. It is sure-footed with the quattro system; the ride is smoother than the eye reading the ruts thinks it will be, and the range of four variable heights feeds confidence that the allroad can go anywhere.
Of course it can't.
Really rich, really serious off-roaders might lay out some $130,000 for a G-Wagen. Those craving the boulders and steepness of way off-road will trick out a Jeep Wrangler with locking diffs and a SEMA showroom of other stuff. The allroad isn't for these folks. It lacks a creeper gear-a low-low gear for those steep plunges that end in a cliff and demand a crawling descent to make the turn-or else. And though the wheels are worn fairly close to the edges of the allroad, enough overhang remains to preclude some of the angles of attack found in the true wild.
And, too, for all the head-on answers to the compromises that matter to most drivers (high stance for clearance on the bad roads and low level for security in turns on the smooth ones) the allroad can wear only one set of tires at a time.
Tires are the ultimate compromise. Off-road (or even awful bad roads) calls for an aggressive tread and thick side walls to resist cuts from sharp rocks. The highway calls for a much milder tread for grip on a dry road and thinner sidewalls to flex properly and keep the tread in contact with the road for traction. Next Page