It might look like something you’ll see on Waking The Dead or any other crime-scene investigation TV drama. But Audi did indeed show an integrated Q3 pop-up tent at the 2014 Worthersee motoring festival.
Developed under the Audi Original Accessories brand, the pop-up tent clips on to the tailgate of a Q3 and erects in seven minutes flat. When we canvassed opinion in the CAR offices, we agreed it was one of the stranger car accessories we’ve seen in recent years.
The Q3 pop-up tent is inflatable, high-pressure air-beams replacing more traditional tent poles. So you can pull up at the campsite, plug in a compressor and roll out of the boot and straight into your fully erected camping home. It’s the perfect lazy man’s camping accessory.
You’ve just got to hope that neighbouring campers don’t do the modern equivalent of loosening your tent pegs by snipping your Eden Project-style latticework air-beams in the middle of the night with a pair of scissors.
Why is Audi building tents anyway?
It’s the whole lifestyle thing. Audi customers – if you believe the adverts – spend at least half their waking hours on mountain bikes, kayaking or completing endurance marathons. So developing a concept tent is the marketing department’s next way to convince us of the wholesome lifestyle nature of its Q cars.
Audi says the Q3 camping tent is rated for wind speeds of up to 40mph. So don’t expect to take your Q3 on an Arctic adventure – but it should cope with a stiff Devon sea breeze.
Sadly, a UK spokesman said they have no plans to sell pop-up tents in showrooms just yet. ‘It’s just a concept at this stage,’ he told us. ‘We usually do zany things at Worthersee and this is one of those.’