The Audi A3 sedan is a good-looking car: surprisingly well-proportioned for a compact sedan, more interesting than the “seen it before” hatchback, and nicely compact compared to its overlong and boring bigger brother, the A4. One of the better aspects of its design is the rear, and especially the aggressively squinty tail lights, which look much better than the boring lamps on the A4, or the weirdly frowning-looking ones on the A6. But the A3 sedan is not the only car that sports such aggressive lamps at the rear, to the benefit of the overall design.
Another such car is the Mazda3 sedan, which, like the A3 made, its debut in 2013, rendering moot any discussion of whether one carmaker copied the other, or vice versa. Of the two, the A3 looks a bit more upscale thanks to the horizontal line that defines the lower lip of the trunk, and more elegant integration of the reflective strips in the bumper. Still, the Mazda3 is one of my favorite designs, and the sedan versions of the Mazda3 and A3 are one of the few good-looking compact sedans around.
