ELEGANCE ON WHEELS; A6 holds its own against competition.(Auto File)

We would never say that as a company Audi has an inferiority complex, but we could understand if it did.

Competing against its two backyard luxury car-making archrivals-Mercedes-Benz and BMW-is enough to give any carmaker a complex. And it's not just the German makers Audi need worry about, as competition from Acura, Cadillac, Infiniti, Jaguar and Lexus, among others, makes the luxury car field a crowded one.

But Audi has a couple of hole cards to play in this high-stakes luxury car poker game: exceptional design and the decades-old reputation of its quattro all-wheel drive.

To keep the A6 a player, prior to last fall's launch of the new model Audi promised the luxury quotient would be ramped up and the sporty looks and feel of the car would be even better than the one it replaced, as well as better than all comers to the market. As if to put an exclamation point on that promise, the A6 debuted with a new look featuring the bolder, chiseled grille that we've since come to know as the new face of the Ingolstadt brand.

So the question is: Did Audi deliver on its promise of sportiness and luxury? In a word, yes.

One comment keeps coming up when people describe the A6: elegant. The crisp lines of the exterior give the car a stylish profile. As much as we like the outside of the car, we like the inside even more. Swathed in fine leather and wood trim in a classic design, the A6's interior is the standard other automakers benchmark. Audi has long been noted for making some of the finest interiors in the business, and the A6 redefines the segment.

While not the quickest car in its class, the A6's 4.2-liter 335-hp V8 and six-speed automatic transmission work in concert, allowing the Audi to easily play in the left lane on the autobahn. We drove it from 0 to 60 mph in 6.56 seconds and covered the quarter-mile in 14.96 seconds at 95.2 mph. For comparison, the BMW 545i we tested got to 60 mph in 5.63 seconds and ran the quarter-mile in 14.14 seconds at 100.6 mph (DoubleTake, March 7).