Our petrol A1 long-termer has a lot going for it, except for one important area – running costs.

Out of the 10 petrol A1 derivatives available our 1.4-litre TFSI (185PS) S line S tronic is the most expensive to run.

A quick calculation using the Fleet News car running costs tool (www.fleetnews.co.uk), provided by Kee Resources, reveals that on an operating cycle of four years/80,000 miles our A1 costs around 34ppm.

That’s nearly 10ppm more expensive than the 1.2 TFSI (86PS) SE, which has the lowest running costs of the petrol range at approximately 25ppm.

Over 80,000 miles our model costs £27,200 compared to £20,000 in the 1.2 SE.
Compare it to the diesel with the lowest running costs – the 1.6 TDi (105) SE, which costs around 24ppm – and the difference is £8,000.

The more comparable 1.6 TDI (105) S line costs £21,600 over 80,000 miles - still £5,600 cheaper to run than our A1.

CO2-wise our A1 has the highest emissions at 139g/km, although it’s still considerably below the 160g/km benchmark.

The rest of the range is all sub-130g/km, with the 1.6-litre diesel engine dipping below the all-important 100g/km.
The A1’s original 1.6-litre TDI engine was 105g/km but thanks to a number of revisions Audi has reduced CO2 to 99g/km and improved fuel economy from 70.6mpg to 74.5mpg.

Fuel economy in our long termer is still short of the official combined figure of 47.9mpg. Currently it’s been around the 37mpg mark.

Sister brand Parkers have also been also been running the 1.4-litre TFSi S line S tronic and they are achieving almost the same mpg with an average of 36.7.

Having run the A1 for a month longer than us though they have around another 1,000 miles on the clock.

Admittedly, focusing solely on running costs does our long-termer a disservice. It ignores the fact that the A1 is fun to drive and that opting for a car with 182bhp that can do 0-62mph in 6.9 seconds has to mean compromising on fuel economy.

However, it does highlight that the sensible choice for fleets is the diesel engine.