2020 Audi Q5 vs BMW X3

What's the difference?

In 2019, from a range boasting more than a dozen different models, the mid-size luxury Q5 SUV was Audi Australia’s best seller.

Right-sized for the city, yet large enough for the highway, its appeal is partially underpinned by a premium, but not over-the-top price list stretching from around $65,000 to just over $90K.

We spent a week behind the wheel of the second-from-the-top 45 TFSI Sport to see if this Q5’s Vorsprung and Durch match its Technik.

Big fast SUVs have long been a guilty pleasure of mine. My brain has been telling me for years, since the first time I drove one - the first-gen Audi SQ5 - that they're silly and wasteful and 'not my kind of car'.

The Europeans - and latterly, the Americans - seem to be playing to an audience of me, convincing my prejudiced head that my try-anything heart is right: over-engined, jacked-up, stiffly-sprung family wagons are as much fun as anything else.

The X3 M is BMW's first full-fat M version of the X3, a car that has never really fired the imagination until this third generation. First we got the very good X3 M40i, now we have a 375kW, twin-turbo straight-six screamer, the M Competition.