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Audi to debut Q3 Sportback this year

Yes, even the new Q3 is getting the "coupeover" treatment.

Steven Ewing Former managing editor
Steven Ewing spent his childhood reading car magazines, making his career as an automotive journalist an absolute dream job. After getting his foot in the door at Automobile while he was still a teenager, Ewing found homes on the mastheads at Winding Road magazine, Autoblog and Motor1.com before joining the CNET team in 2018. He has also served on the World Car Awards jury. Ewing grew up ingrained in the car culture of Detroit -- the Motor City -- before eventually moving to Los Angeles. In his free time, Ewing loves to cook, binge trash TV and play the drums.
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The new Q3 launches in the US later this year.

 Audi

new Q3 crossover will launch in the US in the coming months, and it'll soon be joined by a Sportback variant. As is the growing trend these days, the Q3 Sportback will have a crossover-coupe body style.

"The Sportback aims to replicate the success of the in the full-size class," the company said Thursday in a statement. "With the combination of the everyday qualities of an SUV an the markedly dynamic lines of a Sportback, it will surely attract many additional customer groups to the product line."

The Q3 Sportback's closest competitor will be the , itself a more stylized version of the . It's unclear just how rakish the new Sportback will be, but if the Q8's design is anything to go by, it shouldn't shake up the Q3's design too drastically.

The standard Q3 will be offered with a 2.0-liter, turbocharged I4 engine when it arrives in the States later this year, available in 184- or 228-horsepower states of tune. We don't yet know if the Sportback will be available with one or both of these powertrains, or which of the other European-market engines it'll have in its roster.

Look for the new Q3 Sportback to debut sometime in late 2019.

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