Here's The New Sedan Audi Made To Conquer The American Luxury Market

Available for the first time as a sedan, rather than a hatchback wagon, the A3 is built to appeal to American buyers looking for luxury, technology, power, and fuel economy.

At under 3,000 pounds, it will be the lightest car of its kind.

It will come with an Audi infotainment system that outpaces the already impressive system present in the 2013 models.

"We believe in modern technology," Scott Keogh, President of Audi of America, said at the event. He showed off the screen itself, which rises out of the dashboard, as an example of how the technology is integrated into the car, not added at the last minute. "No one else does this stuff."

In fact, Keogh ranked connectivity as the second most important feature for prospective buyers, after performance.

For that, Audi put a 2.0 TDI engine under the hood, which produces 150 horsepower, enough to go from 0 to 62 mph in 8.7 seconds. That's hardly breathtaking, but for customers who want more power, there's the S3, also revealed at the event.

The high-performance variant of the sedan offers 300 horsepower, cutting the 0 to 62mph time down to a much more impressive 4.9 seconds.

The sedan is built to please customers in the US, where hatchback wagons are not nearly as popular as they are in Europe. The sedan body is also a big plus in the Chinese market, a nice upside for Audi, which is among the many automakers fighting for a bigger piece of the growing luxury market in Asia.

Here are photos from the New York debut. The A3 is in white, the S3 in red: