B7 A4 2.0T S-line

[Dippy]

Other than the last dealer 'open day' I attended, the only time I get to drive different cars is when my car is in for service. Well that time has come again, and this time the dealer has loaned me a B7 A4 2.0T Avant S-Line.

Now where I hated the exterior styling and disliked the interior styling of the B6, now I quite like the exterior styling of the B7 (but I still like the B5), and maybe the interior does not seem too bad (although I think I still prefer the B5). So I started more positively with my experience of this car, especially since I had previously test driven the B7 RS4 and had found out what a fantastic car that is. Unfortunately this one is far from fantastic.

The only thing good about this car are the brakes. The front disks are ventilated & cross-drilled and have good stopping power. Perhaps they are a bit snatchy, but I prefer a car that over-brakes than under-brakes. I still get annoyed that I had to upgrade my S4's brakes where now Audi seem to put decent brakes on most of their cars.

The engine is rubbish. Initially I thought that it was fast, but when I started actually looking at the speedo, I realised that somehow the car feels fast when it isn't. There simply is no decent level of torque to propel the car forwards. I often found my foot pushing the gas pedal to the floor and waiting for something to happen. In 1st, 2nd and 3rd gear I could just about get a reasonable spurt of acceleration around 3-4K revs, but then it just got boring. In 4th, 5th and 6th gear there doesn't seem to be any torque at all. I really can't see the point of 6th gear in this car.

Unbelievably I can just about get torque-steer in this car. That's really worrying because I don't know what the peak torque is, but it doesn't feel very high.

The handling is not very good. The suspension is not particularly soft and the ride is good, but it doesn't take much to make this car understeer. The tyres are Continental 235/40/18s (wider than my S4's tyres), so I'd expect them to be half decent, but I reckon that if I tried to drive it like my S4 this car would easily lose traction and spin.

The only compensation, which is a double-edged sword, is that the steering is light and powerful. So when the car starts to understeer it is relatively easy to correct the trajectory with a flick of the steering wheel. But I could see this easily resulting in a spin!

Lastly the interior. This car has sports seats, a bit like the standard ones in the B5 S4, so I was immediately reminded of why I have Recaros in mine. But I think they are fake leather. This material is textured, which is good because it seems to prevent my arse from slipping around when cornering. However it also seems to grip my arse when I'm trying to get out of the car and I worry that my trousers will be ripped off.

Although the Radio/CD is only the basic one (Concert?), the sound system is Bose. In my car I think Bose sounds great. In this car it is tinny and lifeless.

So that's it. The car is rubbish. I am amazed that the RS4, which is a fantastic car, is based on the same car. In a way this justifies the extra cost of the RS4. Clearly to turn the basic A4 into the RS4 requires a horrendous amount of re-engineering, and that's what we pay for!

[Jarv]

Beautiful write up Dippy sir, makes me feel better about that who screwed me around with the Golf for sale last night. He had one on his front drive. He deserves it.