ArcaMax

WHAT'S GOOD

Diesel is quieter than many new (direct injected) gas engines. She'll travel nearly 600 miles on a full tank. More, if you hypermile her. Eight inches (yes, that's right) more backseat legroom than in the CLA250. Dance on a dime handling.

WHAT'S NOT SO GOOD

CLA is much quicker. ILX is much cheaper.. Clunky iPod interface (located in a hard to see/hard to reach place).

UNDER THE HOOD

The A3 TDI's turbo-diesel engine displaces 2.0 liters and makes 150 hp - seemingly small potatoes compared with the CLA's 2.0 liter turbo-gas engine, which makes 208 hp (the Acura ILX's 2.4 liter gas engine - not turbo'd - makes 201 hp).

However, the Audi diesel makes almost as much torque as the Mercedes - 236 ft.-lbs. vs. 258 ft.-lbs. (and much more torque than the ILX's non-turbo four, which only offers up 180 ft.-lbs.). So it pulls decently - and rather immediately. Even though it is the least-quick of the three (zero to 60 in about 8.2 seconds with FWD vs. 6.4 for the Benz and 6.8 for the Acura) it's not slow, per se. Just relative to the other cars in this general price range.

But, your reward for giving up a second or so, 0-60, (if it comes to drag racing - and how often does it come down to that?) is phenomenally good mileage. The Audi rates 31 city, 43 highway - and (trust me) does better than that in real-world driving. In a week of thrashing it - including highway driving at a steady 80-something (with forays up to speeds well above that) I neveraveraged less than 38.8 MPG. Drive it more reasonably (read: legally) and you will have no trouble averaging 40 or more. How good is that?

Even if you go by the EPA stats, the Audi's city figure nearly matches the CLA's highway number (38 MPG) and its EAP-rated average (36 MPG) is about 10 MPG better. That's a big difference. Here's another - range.

The A3 TDI can go almost 600 miles on a full tank (13.2 gallons) which means three rather than four fill-ups a month for the typical driver - and longer in-betweens when you're on a road trip.

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