We don’t have much in the way of explanation to go on, but what we’re looking at here is a couple of BMWs, a 5-Series and a 6-Series, on one side, and a 4-Series Coupe on the other side of the road, stuck on a flooded road, while an Audi A6 forges ahead with little trouble.
Few have championed the benefits of all-wheel drive quite like Audi has, but did it really matter in this instance?
We think not since a) BMW does offer xDrive itself and it’s possible that one or both of these cars came with AWD and b) these two BMWs did not get stuck because of their inferior or even the lack of an AWD system, but most likely because of some sort of mechanical or electric failure.
Speaking of Audi’s Quattro system, even though it didn’t invent all-wheel drive, it has made the feature central to its approach. Not unlike the diesel propulsion it would champion at Le Mans, Audi introduced the benefits of four-wheel traction to the rally scene with the Ur-Quattro way back in 1980, and set about rolling it out on its production models in the following years.
By now it at least offers Quattro all-wheel drive on all of its models, and includes it as standard equipment on many. That puts it out ahead even of Subaru, which has similarly championed the technology but doesn’t offer it on the rear-drive BRZ sports car.
Last month, Audi celebrated the production of its 8 millionth vehicle with all-wheel-drive, reporting that 44 percent of its customers around the world opted for all-wheel drive in 2015. Nowadays, rivals like Mercedes-Benz and BMW similarly offer their 4Matic and xDrive systems on most of their models.