Audi Cross Cabriolet Concept

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What is it?
Audi Cross Cabriolet Concept

What's special about it?
This is yet another one of Audi's attempts to make an off-road vehicle out of something that would look more at home in a shopping mall parking lot. The first time around, it was the Allroad station wagon; now Audi is trying the idea again with the Cross Cabriolet Concept.

It's a two-door, four-seat off-roader built using the same basic architecture as the Audi A4 sedan and A5 coupe. The Cross Cabriolet Concept is 182 inches long, 75 inches wide and has an overall height of just over 64 inches, which makes it roughly the same size as a BMW X3.

Look closely and the overall design is similar to the Metroproject Concept recently shown in Tokyo. For the Cross Cabriolet, Audi took the same basic shape, added a folding soft top, jacked up the ride height and gave it a shiny new grille. There's also a full complement of LED lighting, including full working headlights just like on the R8.

Underneath the skin, Audi's engineers added reinforcements to the A-pillars, door sills and rear-seat crossmember to maintain the Cross Cabriolet's stiffness. A pair of spring-loaded roll bars were also added behind the rear seats in case of a rollover.

Under the hood, Audi installed its latest TDI engine, which it calls the cleanest diesel in the world. Although the 3.0-liter engine develops 240 horsepower and 368 pound-feet of torque, it still manages to meet California's most stringent emissions standards by utilizing Adblue injection to reduce oxides of nitrogen by 90 percent. Naturally, power runs to all four wheels through Audi's Quattro all-wheel-drive system. A mechanical center differential sends 60 percent of the power to the rear wheels under normal conditions and redirects up to 65 percent of the power to the front wheels as needed.

The suspension setup is similar to the five-link system used in the A4 and A5, but the Cross Cabriolet also gets the variable dampers used in the top-of-the-line Q7. There's also an electric ride-height adjustment system that can lift the body an extra 1.6 inches for a little extra ground clearance. You would think with its 21-inch wheels and 265/35 tires, ground clearance would be the least of this vehicle's problems.

Inside, the Cross Cabriolet has seating for a driver and three passengers only. Everybody gets their own heated and cooled cupholders, along with plenty of space, according to Audi. Even with the top up, Audi claims rear-seat head- and shoulder room is uncompromised. There's plenty of high-tech gadgetry, too. The navigation system is Internet-ready so it's able to use Google Earth as its main means of pointing the way to a destination. It also allows the Bang & Olufsen audio system to pull in Internet radio stations if there's nothing on the satellites worth listening to.

What's Edmunds' take?
Look past the folding soft top and four-seat configuration, and this concept is a pretty good preview of what you can expect from the upcoming Audi Q5 compact SUV. — Ed Hellwig, Senior Editor