Picked up the beast on Friday

[Edmond]

Hi All,

I picked up my Sepang Blue car on Friday from the dealer and had a good 200 mile drive including a couple of A roads to get the car home.

Firstly - Audi dealers are way better than Land Rover - by a mile. I'm yet to have a good experience with them - but the guy at the dealer who looked after me was excellent. Picking me up from the station - working with me to get the tracker swapped over before I left the dealer - plus the hospitality is way better than the usual crap coffee machine LR seem to have. They'd already organised for a ghost to be fitted the day before which also got thumbs up from me.

Coming from a Full Fat RR the car had a tough act to follow on the motorway - and for the first few miles I was genuinely sitting there going - <beep> - have a made a mistake.
Frankly however - you're never going to compete with the Range Rover interior, driving height and the sheer quietness - its insane in there - I nearly fell asleep in my old one when i had adaptive cruise running it's THAT quiet.

However - after an hour of fiddling around with settings and getting my driving position right I came to realise that compared to anything else the car is spectacularly good at cruising. Very quiet bar the nice undertone of rumble from the engine - and effortless due to the torque at keeping up traffic. I actually found myself driving more slowly than I would do normally which surprised me.

The only disappointment is the stereo - its the standard bose - but it almost sounds like I've got a speaker out - the RR with the Meridian 850W system was deep and rich (not the top 1700W model) and filled the cabin - the bose lacks that tone no matter how I fiddled with the settings.

However - as you can imagine - the moment I cut across to A roads all was forgiven - the car is SPECTACULAR. I basically spent my time slowing down to create gaps and just flooring it and giggling hysterically - including phoning mates and going "listen to this!". I'm glad I have the sports exhaust after my initial concerns - just about right for me - super quiet in comfort and great for tooling around town which I've been doing ferrying kids about the place this weekend but suitably fun when elsewhere. My kids love it.

A few launches out of roundabouts etc also showed me how insane the levels of grip are.

The only journalist I rate is Chris Harris - but even I didn't believe him when he goes about how supple the car is - suspension in comfort (I have Dynamic) - steering in comfort - and the way the car soaks up bumps including monster speed bumps round me is amazing. You can feel just how long the travel is and the car is very well cushioned. I spent time switching between my individual set up and dynamic and you can literally feel the car get up on its toes.

So - I now have all my security on the car bar a blackvue - Carplay about to be added by our friend @audi_carplay on Telegram, and my sim has just arrived for Audi Connect.

Wife has just taken it for her first drive - it's a bit like the man from del monte moment - but considering she was grinning when she fired it up I hope I'm ok and the RR chat dies down!

[Iain]

Congrats - wait until you put a Milltek on it......

[ShaneyB]

[Tadass910]

Congrats - wait until you put a Milltek on it......

[Lig]

Nice one Edmond.

It looks the nuts.... The gunmetal wheels work nicely with the silver alloy bits (wingmirrors, grill surrounds, inlet fins etc....) and glad you love it!!

All you need now is a Road Angel! Its just very hard to keep these cars under the speed limits!!

Cheers,
Lig.

[drbru]

so here's the thing mate that I think you may be able to help with

im in the market for a RR sports SVR or an RS6 performance edition....really love the look go the RR but appreciate its going to be a completely different experience compared to an rs6 however the one thing that keeps on putting me off the RR is the reliability and the dealer network

[Edmond]

Hello mate,

Reliability wise they’re actually nowhere near as bad as people make out. I ran old shape one for 5.5 years and nothing major went wrong - as with any expensive car the parts and labour for general stuff aren’t cheap - but I made friends with a good local mechanic who did all the stuff that didn’t need a dealer to do it.

If you get extra warranty (about 700 quid a year if you haggle hard at the time you buy the car secondhand) the warranty are by all accounts pretty good.

The dealers are basically really variable - there are still some great family owned ones but the the ones are part of big chains seem to be crap and getting parts delivered that aren’t in stock seems to be really hit and miss.

I genuinely loved my L405 (new shape full size) and would have bought another if I could have found one/trusted the security - and as I had to stick all the extra stuff I’ve done on anyway I couldn’t resist using it to protect a 562hp beast instead.

[Edmond]

Nice one Edmond.

It looks the nuts.... The gunmetal wheels work nicely with the silver alloy bits (wingmirrors, grill surrounds, inlet fins etc....) and glad you love it!!

All you need now is a Road Angel! Its just very hard to keep these cars under the speed limits!!

Cheers,
Lig.

Yeah it was the wheels and colour combo I fell in love with plus the spec. It looks better in the flesh than in pictures!

[ShaneyB]

What area are you in Edmond?

[ab54666]

Looks lovely mate, keep it locked away!!

[Edmond]

I saw about another one being taken. No choice but to keep it on street but it’s suitably tooled up and has a stop lock on it. Fingers crossed!

[mrmerle]

Congrats on new purchase, I can highly recommend the Black Vue system, I have the 750 front and rear system and its paid for itself multiple times over the in the last week - first event, missus was driving behind me on our way to drop her car off for a replacement windscreen when a motorbike ploughed into the back of her, all caught on rear view camera from my car, footage sent straight to insurance, validated fault and instantly waived excess costs. Second event was yesterday, I was parked up in B&Q when one of their staff left a trolley unattended while pratting around - the wind took the trolley at a speed of knots and it hit my rear quarter leaving a dent, scratches and five pence piece sized chunk of paint missing - all captured on the rear view camera due to the motion sensor features, thank fully it was also witnessed by a fellow petrolhead who waited for me to return to the car.

As to experiences with Audi dealers, I have to say that they have been the worst car brand I've ever experienced for basic customer service - granted I've only dealt with two dealerships in the Sytner network but the equivalent BMW garages a stones throw away are light and day in terms of customer service, keeping you updated with progress and just generally giving you confidence that they know what they are doing. Would avoid Leicester Audi like the plague given their after sales service and clueless service team, in the end I gave up trying to get an answer out of them as to some remedial work they had apparently done while the car was in for something completely unrelated.