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Audi has hinted with an official tweet that it may be bringing its coveted Avant line of station wagons to the United States market, but no further details were shared.
Audi built a name for its Avant wagons in 1994 with the well-received RS 2 Avant, which helped the company establish itself as an upscale marque. Due to Americans’ abandonment of the wagon body style in favor of minivans shortly before the RS 2 Avant’s inception, and the subsequent switches to SUVs and their crossover lookalikes, Audi has a limited history of wagon sales in the United States.
Many of the brand’s fans have seen models such as the high-performance RS 6 Avant (pictured above) sold overseas, and have made a ruckus about wanting to see the model sold in the Americas. Audi made what was for its fans a landmark acknowledgment of their requests in February, its U.S. director of product communications Mark Dahncke confirming to The Drive that the automaker will “continue to investigate future models and certainly include Avant variants as part of that process.”
Audi has previously commented that it does not sell the A6 Avant in the US due to the risk of cannibalizing sales from the similarly priced Q7. The above tweet implies that Audi may be reconsidering its position give both its fans’ calls for Avant wagons to be brought Stateside and a study that suggests that the wagon body style is enjoying something of a resurgence with American buyers.
This study found that wagon sales have increased 29 percent over the last five years, making wagons the fourth quickest-growing segment on the market, though, with a minuscule two percent market share, wagon buyers remain the minority of new car customers. U.S. sales of the A4 have remained steadily in the 34,000s for the last three years running, which given the aforementioned study’s results, implies that Audi stands to capitalize on 600 to 700 potential A4 Avant sales per annum in the U.S.
