Julian Kirk puts the A6 Avant’s load-lugging abilities to the test.

The Audi A6 Avant can’t quite accommodate the wooden game our tester usually takes to his daughter’s school fete

Part of my rock and roll life these days is to act as general gopher for the parents’ association of my daughter’s school.

Whenever there are tables to be moved or marquees to be shifted, the nice ladies of the PA kindly volunteer me and my big car to step in.

Which, when you have an E-Class estate, is not a problem. However, the E-Class is now gone and the ladies of the committee were a little concerned about my abilities in the load-lugging department.

Happily, I am pleased to report that their fears have been allayed (slightly). The good news, I told the ladies, is that my new A6 Avant is a similarly large estate car so load lugging is still very much within my repertoire. Although, I told them, there is a slight caveat – the A6 is just not quite the load lugger the Mercedes-Benz is. Not by much, but by enough to make a difference.

An example: the overall length of the boot space means that I can’t collect the absurdly large wooden village fete game they use every summer for an event. This two-metre long piece of wood fitted snugly in the Mercedes (load length 2,005mm) but it just won’t fit in the A6 (load length 1,978mm).

Bad news for the PA, but good news for me as I won’t give myself a hernia trying to manhandle this game into the car. Instead, I shall volunteer for tasting duties on the cake stall.

P11d/BiK: £36,960 (29%) MPG/CO2:60.3mpg (WLTP)/123g/km (NEDC Correlated) TestMPG: 32mpg