Used Audi Q2: A Worse, Costlier Creta
I test-drove a used Audi Q2 (petrol SUV, 2021 model, 40 TFSI1) for 3 hours, both in the city and on the highway, and evaluated it against my requirements. Based on this, I conclude that the Q2 is worse than the Creta and the Seltos in all aspects — performance, comfort, cooling and digital features. Despite this, even a used Q2 costs ₹30+ lakhs, more than the 26 a new Creta or Seltos sells for. Why pay more for a worse car?
Read on for details:
- The interior looks older than the Creta’s, which feels more upscale.
- The car uses leather, which I dislike since it involves killing animals.
- The cruise control is not adaptive.
- Being a CBU, replacement parts may take 3 months to import2.
± The outer edge of the wing mirror is curved for a wider field of view, but that area appears distorted. Vehicles appear squeezed horizontally and stretched vertically. I doubt such a distorted picture helps.
+ The car has a range indicator. When fuel runs low, it displays Refuel immediately with a beep, to catch your attention. If you miss it, a red LED keeps flashing. By contrast, in my Ritz, unless I keep checking the fuel meter, it’s easy to run out without noticing.
+ Once, the range indicator showed 0 km and “Refuel immediately”, so we refueled ₹500, but in 40 minutes, it again showed 0 km. This car is fuel-inefficient.
- The car can’t handle bumps at speed — it scraped the bottom.
± The car has an Electronic Parking Brake, and in addition, a Park position on the gear lever.
- The voice search didn’t work well. When I held down the voice button on the steering wheel and asked, “How long to <area name>?” it instead called a contact with that word in their name.
- No ADAS.
- When reversing, I get curved guidelines that move as you rotate the steering wheel, helping me navigate a parking lot or other cramped space confidently. But when navigating such a space slowly in forward, these guidelines are missing. Forward is less useful, but still useful. By contrast, the Creta and Seltos can show these curved lines both in reverse and forward.
Comfort
+ Steering tilts and telescopes
+ Front / back, recline and height adjustments.
- But these are manual. The height adjustment requires effort and isn’t safe to use while driving.
+ Good legroom
- Poor headroom. Lowering the seat puts my legs more in front of me than under me, which makes my stomach feel compressed. This is because the car is just 1.5 meters tall — most SUVs and hatchbacks are 1.6 meters or taller. The Q2 is not an SUV; it’s something between a sedan and an SUV. When we were behind a Creta Electric, I found myself looking up at it.
- Only 2 adults and 2 children can travel in comfort.
- The engine vibrates and is audible even when idling, while the Creta’s is not audible even when cruising at 100 kph. The Q2’s engine also sounds harsher, while the Creta’s sounds more refined.
- The brake stops the car with a jerk. Even when I was conscious of it and tried to ease off the brake as the car stopped, it happened. It happened even when the salesman —who’s used to this car — was driving, so it’s clearly a problem with the car, not the drivers.
- The car has engine braking. Coasting down a bridge, it decelerated. And it’s worse in Dynamic driving mode — lifting off the throttle caused a backward jerk. Another time, when I pressed the accelerator, it engine-braked before accelerating. This makes the ride uncomfortable with forward and backward jerks. The Q2 can't be both comfortable and performant at once the way a Windsor or Creta is.
- The steering wheel is hard.
Driving
± You have to press the accelerator significantly even to accelerate a little.
- Turbo lag is no better than the Creta’s — despite the Q2 costing a lot more.
- There are two driving modes: one via the gear lever (D and S3), and the other via a button for Comfort, Dynamic4, Efficiency5, Auto and Off-road. I switched to S, but the performance didn’t improve, until I selected Dynamic6, too. Why have two overlapping systems? One is enough. In any case, once I figured the interface out, selecting both Dynamic and Sport did improve performance — but even then it wasn’t faster than the Creta or the Seltos, let alone the Windsor, all of which rocket forward when floored7.
± It has 7 gears, which is par for the course.
+ The car comes with an all-wheel drive. All four wheels are driven all the time, and you can’t customise how this works. In my limited testing on the road in good weather, I couldn’t observe any improvement the AWD offers over the 2-wheel drive found in most vehicles like the Windsor or the Creta.
- The horn requires a hard press. Sometimes, when I needed to honk quickly, I couldn’t.
- The car shows the current gear (e.g., D2 for second gear) — it gives insight into how the system works.
Digital features
- No USB-C port for the front seats
+ 2 USB-A, one in the center console storage.
+ 12V socket
+ Wired CarPlay.
- The music is too bassy. Even after reducing the bass, it sounds processed and unsatisfying. Worse, every drumbeat felt physically uncomfortable — not in an immersive way like on a good speaker system, but in a jarring, unpleasant way that hit my body rather than engaged me. This is miles behind the Creta’s excellent Bose 8-speaker system.
- The infotainment screen isn’t a touchscreen. You have to rotate an unintuitive dial to navigate it. This is a 2021 Q2, but the last time I used this kind of hacked-together interface was in 2009, before I bought my first iPhone.
Cooling
- Can’t start AC remotely
+ Dual-zone
- No ventilated seats
- Glovebox isn’t cooled
- The sunroof isn’t panoramic.
- When closed, the sunroof lets in glare and heat — it isn’t fully opaque.
+ The door bottle holder is big — even my fat red Thermos flask fits.
- 2 bottle holders in the center console, but placing a bottle there comes in the way of the AC temperature dial (the one with blue on the left and red on the right).
- The AC is not as effective as the Creta’s.
Rear seat
- Poor headroom — only 2 inches. Feels cramped.
- Can’t stretch my legs.
- The seat is narrow width-wise: my hip is almost touching the door on one side and the center armrest on the other. It reminded me of an economy class airline seat..
- No AC vent.
- No phone holder, whether in the armest or the center console.
+ 2 USB-C ports
+ 12V socket
- My eye is close to the top of the window, which isn’t panoramic — either front to back or top to bottom.
In Audi’s terminology, 45 TFSI means greater bhp or kw power output from the engine than 40 which is greater than 35… This is unnecessary, since they could have directly mentioned the KW number. Actually, the more relevant number is the 0-100 speed.
Even if they’re available in India, they could take a month rather than a fortnight to procure.
Drive and Sport, respectively.
For spirited driving.
To save fuel.
Selecting Dynamic automatically selects Sport, so if you own this car and want maximum performance, just select Dynamic.
This may be because it’s saddled with a torque converter rather than the DCT, which is the gold standard — it delivers unparalleled performance and responsiveness.