We may have been full of European airs and graces over the past few years, but we've singularly refused to adopt every European trend. We may have swapped our mug of tea and sliced pan for lattes and croissants, but we've adopted a certain a la carte approach to the lifestyle choices of our continental cousins.
In the automotive world, we're often regarded as "unique" (backward, to put it plainly) in our failure to go with European trends, in particular the fascination with estate cars and diesel. To some of our European colleagues it's another sign that, while we may have been bitten by the Celtic tiger, but we remain a little behind the times.
There are, of course, good reasons for our choices. For one, diesel doesn't make sense to many of us, given that the average annual mileage is 15,000 - sorry, 24,100 kilometres. Given the price of diesel and the premium we must pay for oil-burners, it's simply sense to go petrol.
On estates, their heyday was really back in the late 1960s and 1970s when Volvos were the motoring au pairs for large families. We had the requisite number of offspring, but in those pre-tiger days you were upper middle class if you could afford a Hillman Hunter. We missed the estate boom and came into the money as that constituency was being eroded by more colourful formats.
The estate's biggest promise lies in the basic concept: a normal car with a big boot. Superbly functional, true, but in these days lacking in imagination.
By the time our bank accounts matched our needs, there was the burgeoning SUV field for those who wanted a car into which they could stuff three kids, a pram and a set of crampons and ropes.
SUBBED THIS FAR
Family planning didn't quite add up? Then people could opt from an almost limitless selection of people carriers. These are modern day automotive au pair, whose adaptability makes the estate's basic premise look extremely unimaginative.
So what can be said of the new A6 estate, sorry, Avant (no one should be surprised by the name game the car industry is playing. After all, if you can sell a vacuum cleaner called the turbo S, then who can complain)?
Well, the A6 is a good looking car. Perhaps more fetching than the Mercedes E-Class estate, and less avant garde than the 5-Series. It also does well in the image stakes. Audi has for years been trying to separate itself from its ultra-practical Volkswagen brother. For most it's done so, particularly with the new A6. It's predecessor looked like the motoring equivalent of a bull frog that had a run-in with a bunch of vile youths with a straw. This car looks far more tasteful.
The estate - sorry again, Avant - has the traditional front the high-end saloon and a rear passenger section that is broad and deep - plus that big lump of boot. If you were a company executive with a fascination for DIY, then it would amply meet your every need.
All estates are big, but the A6 Avant is bigger. It's longer and wider than the BMW 5-Series Touring. It's also longer and wider than the Mercedes Benz E-Class estate, which one had assumed was as large as an estate car could get before it had to be registered, for tax and insurance purposes, as a commercial vehicle.
The A6's boot space (565 litres of it) is, accordingly, voluminous by estate car standards. Actually, it's voluminous enough to fit a double mattress with a squeeze. It makes the annual pilgrimage to Great Outdoors seem pointless. We've slept in tents with less room than this boot.
There are disadvantages, of course, to a big boot. Unless you're shopping for the whole street, on even the simplest journey, your purchases will spend their time bouncing around like pinballs.
Our test car came with Audi's optional securing set, a rail system with a telescoping rod and an attachment belt that divides up the boot area and tethers your goods if need be. While it's listed as an optional extra, it's really an essential purchase if you don't want the executive hush in the cabin to be disturbed by the crackle of breaking glass every time you round a corner.
As with most cars these days, the boot can be opened using the key fob but, like the rest it only pops the lock rather than actually lifting the bootlid. The fancy electric system used by Lexus on the RX would be useful here.
In the interests of giving an honest review we sacrificed a Saturday morning under the duvet to make a trip to the local DIY warehouse. With our overdraft duly stretched by yet more shelving units that will probably stay unwrapped until Christmas 2008, we headed off for a quick spin through the twists and turns on what's laughably referred to as a national primary road in this land.
Even with all the tethering secure, there was still plenty of slipping and sliding in the boot and corners could be graded on the level of thud of MDF against the car's plastic panelling.
Yet the A6 Avant holds a regal and stately line sweeping through corners. All the electric gadgetry of the stability programmes work away in the background to let you exit the corner in the order you went in.
And there's one area where the A6 does seem to beat the others, and that's interior trim. Its German rivals have tended of late to go for avant garde interior styling, Audi has kept the trim subtle. Some would describe it as a little dull, but for us it's more tasteful than the rest. Perhaps the others are just trying too hard.
Its simplified MMI control system is based on the sort of logic that seemed to evade BMW when it first came out with the iDrive format. Indeed, the latest iDrive system in the new BMW 7-Series has adopted several of the Audi functions. Of course, you will not get them to admit it, even on pain of death.
The 3-litre Tdi engine offered all the power one would need on Irish roads, though we'd have to hold our hands up and admit that we'd have been just as happy with the 2.7 Tdi, given that you'll probably not be hairing around country roads in a fully loaded estate.
Similarly the tiptronic automatic box may look racy, with its paddle shifters fitted to the steering wheel, but they're really rather pointless. Most owners will tire of them within hours of purchase and besides, the system has been set up by some ultra-sensible German engineer to prevent you from really putting the engine to the test so you can only change up or down when the system decides it is prudent to do so.
Better to spend the money on the lower engine and normal automatic. After all, like the rest of the executive set, you'll need the extra cash to properly peruse the options list. Our test car is listed as €69,160 but with extras like automatic air-con, parking system and leather upholstery the final price reached €81,474.
So, finally, where does it rank on the executive stakes? The big problem for those who care about the badge on the front is that so far none of the premium players have come up with a people carrier format that's got street cred at this level. That's going to change in the coming years. For now the BMW is probably still more fun to drive, but the A6 has the look and the interior to win over many of the family set.
While we wait for the car industry in continental Europe to catch up with the forward-thinking Irish motorist's needs, it will be a battle between the A6 Avant and the 5-Series Touring. It's a close call. On the road it's still the 5-Series, but the A6 cuts it very close and will hold it's own when it's time to sell. Either one is a good buy. (Now that's the sort of cop-out worthy of an EU summit.)