This Bargain V6 Audi A3 Has At Least 246 Reasons Why You Should Buy It

We’re just going to whack our goods straight onto the table with this one and let the car do the talking. This is a 3.2-litre fruity V6-powered Audi A3 with full leather and quattro all-wheel drive for comfortably less than £2000. Yes, really.

A furious thirst for unleaded and a £305 annual whack with the road tax stick means that the 3.2 just isn’t that sought-after any more among the general population, but their loss is our gain. At the moment there are dozens in the UK classifieds, both automatic and manual, and they represent an immense amount of car for the money.

This one, which we found with a small trader in Leeds, in the North East of England, seems to tick most of the boxes, even if it does ask a few questions over how it’s been used by previous owners. It’s a 2004 car on an ‘04’ plate, with an honest-sounding 124,000 miles on the clock. For just £1895 (minus haggling) you get that charismatic engine, a manual gearbox, 12 months MOT, full grey leather and the ability to launch to 62mph in 6.5 seconds, come rain or shine. All of this is contained in a handsome three-door package - the kind of body style that’s apparently dying out.

It uses more or less the same drivetrain as the MkIV Volkswagen Golf R32 and first-generation Audi TT. You get 246bhp from the transverse, narrow-angle V6 or ‘VR6’ engine – not the 236bhp indicated in the listing – and a genuinely enjoyable drive from a car designed to be stable, quick and capable all year round. Top speed is limited to 155mph. Spend a bit more on an aftermarket exhaust system and you’ve got a hell of a symphony under your right foot.

Alright, so at this price there are one or two alarm bells to look into further. The listing says it comes with 12 months MOT but how many advisories were on the last one? It also says that, while the cambelt was changed at 77,000 miles (it may need doing again soon), it had a new clutch and flywheel at 86,000 miles. That can only realistically be because it was abused, and that makes us wonder whether other problems might be hidden away for you to find later, especially if the 38,000 miles since then have been hard on it as well.

But, at this price, it’s surely got to be worth a look. Get under it, take a mechanic friend with you if you like, and if it looks solid enough then you’re getting a V6 character-Audi for about two-thirds the price of a leggy MkV Golf GTI. We’d call that serious value.