24hr test - with pics and report

[Graeme4130]

This afternoon I picked this 62 plate car up for a 24hr test drive
Early impressions driving on real roads in (admittedly, very greasy) real conditions are positive
Tomorrow morning, I'm getting up early and driving up to north Wales to see a friend who lives just on the Evo Triangle, so I'll give it a blast around those fantastic roads up there apnd make my mind up then
Should be about 400miles round trip, so that'll give me an opportunity to properly decide if I want to buy one or not
I'll take my camera too, so I'll get some decent pictures

The car is specced with 20" wheels, DRC, but not sports exhaust or steering

[lengster1]

Thats a real eyefull from the front! Looks awesome!

[Ceveman73]

How do you go about getting a 24 hr test dive? I expressed an interest in a test drive months ago and the best Audi Hatfield have offered is a quick test dive one lunchtime. Any advice?

Thanks

Mart.

[MikeFish]

I must say it does look good in that colour from that angle!

[pDkALO]

How do you go about getting a 24 hr test dive? I expressed an interest in a test drive months ago and the best Audi Hatfield have offered is a quick test dive one lunchtime. Any advice?

Thanks

Mart.

Sales guys can be a funny lot sometimes - I generally work on the basis of politely telling them that you're interested in putting an order in, but only on the basis of a decent test drive, and that any dealer worth their salt who's hoping to get £60k+ of a customer's money should be able to sort that - and being taken seriously helps too, i.e. Barrys in lowered Corsas need not apply.... but given what you already drive I'm surprised that they haven't been more forthcoming

A call to Audi UK might carry some weight if your local still can't offer much?

Also worth bearing in mind though that I think some of the dealers will be reliant on the 'central' Audi UK pool, so they may have limited allocations for test drives, whereas others (presumably larger dealer groups) seem to be getting their own demonstrators. I was in my local today (Inchcape group) for some minor work on my B7 and a sales guy spotted me and came over to tell me that I might be interested in a run in their demo that they're getting in next week. We had a chat and I said I'd probably be OK for the moment as I'd already done 6 laps of the Millbrook Alpine course in one so had a fair idea of what it was like - so next time I'm in he'll either ignore me or be pressing the keys into my hands in the expectation that I'll want to be ordering imminently with a little bit more convincing!

[sonny]

Lucky git, enjoy

Fantastic pic, almost makes me want one!!

[535dboy]

Look forward to your further feedback

[daytonamart]

I think this might be the best B8 picture I've seen.

[535dboy]

I think this might be the best B8 picture I've seen.

Well it is going to spend most of its time there!!!

[carsarecool]

Finally, I've been offered a test drive. Awaiting confirmation it's 24hrs. Then I'll get the GoPro ready and take some decent pics. Might cobble together a real world review video.

***Update - I have just 90 minutes to decide to spend £65k.......not really happy aboput that but lets see how Monday pans out***

[RSDave]

Looking Good! Remember to have a play with the Launch Control DRC: Dynamic, ESP: Off/ or Sport, Gearbox: S Mode, GO!

Kind Regard's, David.

[Graeme4130]

Just dropped the car off after a little over a 500mile/9hr round trip up into the north Wales driving Mecca
Will post up a full report either tonight or tomorrow, but as a taster, I'm 95% sure I really like it a lot more than after the millbrook Audi day and am going to place my order in the next couple of weeks (dealer quoted a summer delivery )
Anyway, here's a taster of the million pics I have (this is from my iPhone, the proper ones are still on my dslr)

[Graeme4130]

Right, I'll try and cover as much as I reasonably can within this ramble as it's still all fresh in my head (I still have a semi numb arse and back from 9hrs of Driving)

Anyway, the best way to start this off to try and explain both my requirement and expectation of the car as well as my RS4 experience to date.

I currently have an 07 model RS4 Avant in Black with Black Buckets and Black optics and I cover around 15k a year in it as a day to car for lugging around kids, doing the shopping and also my carrying my downhill mountain bike, road bike, occasional BMX and generally muddy duties. I don't need the car to be knife edge in terms of dynamics as A) most of my driving is done in crappy conditions and on fairly boring roads and I need the security of AWD where I can safely overtake or 'push on a bit' without worrying about the back end taking over the front end suddenly, B) Although I class myself as a decent road and track driver, cutting edge steering input is secondary to comfort and I don't need the car to be super dynamic as it's just not the sort of driving I do in a day to day car and it won't ever see the track, and finally C) I have a weekend car which is noisier and goes sideways (and also sometimes backwards) everywhere, so drifting and oversteer isn't needed. If Anything, I don't mind the security of a wiff of understeer as at least it'll never catch me out when I'm not concentrating.
I hope that paints a picture of what I was hoping for in the car and basically what my B7 provides me with.

I'd taken a drive on the road and track in the B8 RS4 at the Milbrook Audi day, so I knew basically what to expect. howver, that day was foggy and not ideal conditions, so I didn't really get a feel for the car
I also find that you need to go shopping in it and trapse the kids and parents around in a car and rack up some miles on your own before you get a decent feel for it.
I've got a good relationship with the friendly guys at Swindon Audi, so when they said they had a demo car coming in and would let me have it overnight, I bit their hand off as I've been really keen to get a good test of the car properly
I'd already sat with the sales guys, and we'd basically outlined a spec and package for what I'm looking at, so testing the car was effectively the rubber stamp.

I picked the car up yesterday afternoon, which is a 400mile old daytona grey car fitted with 20" rotor Wheels, Dynamic Suspension, Dynamic Steering (I didn't think it did yesterday, but it soon materialised that it was fitted once I fiddled with the set up today) with a black optics pack, privacy glass and not much else.
I used the day yesterday to do the ferrying around of mrs, kids as well as my elderly parents, and although the Mrs hates it (she generally does when it comes to cars - Unless I'm buying one for her), general impressions were good and it managed all the mundane tasks with ease without showing any of the diff grinding and rolling you get with B7's and R8's - I think Audi have sanitised it a bit, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your perspective.
The car certainly has more space in the back than mine as it's not fitted with the optional bucket seats, which I might add that although I was convinced I'd need them in the B8 after loving them in my B7, the standard seats are very comfortable indeed and offer plenty of support for the sort of driving I do.

Today, I needed to pop up to North Wales to go see a lake (long story), so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and use it as my day with the car and go and find some of the best driving roads the UK has to offer (including a few laps of the 'Evo triangle', which is a small loop of around 20miles that they use in many of their features - It's a mix of tight mountain roads, long sweeping A road and a long fast A road stretch and has no cameras and hardly any traffic). It's a long old trek from my place in Swindon and has been about a 500mile round trip, but although the driving roads were still icy in any areas where there was shade (the temps today hovered around -2 all day), I did enough miles and found enough dry road to really get a feel for the car and cover most of its performance envelope and traffic cruising ability.

I'll attached a few of the pics I took today below, but here I'll try and cover the various aspects of the car and what I felt where positives and negatives

Aesthetics ;
I know that beauty is well and truly in the eye of the beholder and everyone sees things in different ways, but to me the RS4 looks are stunning. It's common theme that you'll see as I go on through this, but I felt that the car looks less 'RS' special and more incognito. For me this is a good thing as I like my day to day car to blend in and only be obvious to those 'in the know', but to others this might detract from the experience. The demo car had the 20" 5spoke wheels which i think gives a much more aggressive look that the standard or 20" multi spoke wheels, but the general styling of the car is less aggressive than my B7 Avant (my mrs felt it was the other way, but being a women, what does she know about car styling, eh? haha)
Interior is certainly more modern and the ergonomics are better than my B7. There were a couple of minor frustrations though. In the RS4, the buttons for the MMI are all chrome, and where they sit flat around the gear stick, in daylight the sun reflects off them and you can't see what they do. They'll become second nature sooner or later and you'll not need to look at them to see what they do, but it was not good today as I had to keep shading them with one hand to see what they do.
Also, there's a small gloss flat area inside the instrument panel in the dash that reflects light from the window and looks like an emergency light flickering on the dash behind the steering wheel. If/when I get mine, I'll put a small square of matt tape there as that annoyed me a little today. I know it sounds small, but for to be honest, it did my head in as for all intents and purposes, it's where a traction control or engine light would be, so it immediately makes you stop and look.
As said above, the seats were very comfortable, they still have that RS4 unique look and feel to them and the extra space they offer in the back means I'll save myself £2.5k and untick the buckets option.

Traffic Driving and general cruising
The car I had didn't have the sports exhaust fitted that I tried at the Audi day, and to be honest it didn't sound too great. However, the trade off is that for motorway and general cruising, you could well be in an automatic 2ltr car. The DSG box handles the mundaneness of general cruising around in Automatic handsomely and behaves like any large capacity slush box Torque converter auto. For motorway cruising, it was certainly a smoother affair than my standard exhausted B7.
On the MMI, I would put the car in comfort mode, which puts the suspension and steering onto it's softest settings and quitens down the exhaust (not that it's loud on dynamic setting) and lowers the throttle response.

Dynamic Steering
I'll be brutally honest, it's pretty crap if you're looking for any form of real feedback.
it has two settings, comfort and dynamic and the only perceivable difference was the weighting of the wheel. The feedback levels are not great and you tend to feel a little disjointed from what's happening at the front wheels. I can see why they've done it and the extra weight adds a somewhat artificial involvment, but the dymanic setting is too weighty when not up to real speeds and the comfort setting is too light until you're at motorway speeds where it's actually at it's best. I found when pushing on, the dynamic setting was best, but it was a little too heaving. I'll not be speccing that on my car as I understand the standard steering is not far off my B7 steering, which in my eyes is about perfect for weight and feel.
The new wheel is very tactile though and it's a nice size with the paddles sitting perfectly at qtr to three. It's a small issue, but I'd personally prefer the paddles to be a little larger and cover more of the wheel circumference, ala Ferrari 458 or Maser Paddles which cover about 8-11 and 1-4 on a clock rather than 8.30-9.30 and 2.30-3.30 as they do on an audi. If you're two hands on the wheel, then it's no probs, but there was times where I had to reach for the paddle that wasn't there.

Dynamic Suspension
Like the steering, it has two settings
The comfort setting is really very comfortably indeed and the damping is at a very similar rate that in my B7 (The DRC was changed in mine in 2010, so it's still fairly fresh), but the spring rate is a little softer, which is no bad thing. You still don't get much body roll and it suits the majority of UK roads. This setting does a wonderful job of cruising as well as keeping things tight when you're pushing on. I actually found that in custom settings, you can switch engine, steering etc to dynamic and keep the suspension on confort, which was the best for most types of 'spirited' driving, unless you wanted to go past 85-90% in which case the dynamic setting just sharpens up the damping a little and also seems to keep the body role reigned in a little more (it's already very good in comfort) - For a smooth track or really well surfaced road, Dynamic is good, but for general pushing on at 80% or so, comfort is fine and the back end of the car will track the bumps a little better too for more traction.
The car isn't as inspiring when pressing on a bit as the B7 and it's much more a case of knowing where the adhesion limits are rather than feeling them. I'm sure it'll cover a lap of any track just as quick, but it's not as involving as the B7 and although I understand it has the same 60/40 drive bias as my car and the engine is slightly further back, it's still a natural under steerer and this is pronounced by the mildly inert steering.
Still, there's plenty of grip and the pace over covering ground in all conditions is equally as present as the B7.
if you did want to drift it, then you can get the back end out, but it takes some serious effort and it's not a particularly pleasant an experience as there's some serious physics trying to stop you playing. For me, that's not a bad thing as if I wanted a hooligans car, I'd have bought an M3 or C63

Engine/gearbox
I'd struggle to tell you that (gear change apart) it's any faster than my B7. My car has recently had a full carbon clean (read as top end engine rebuild courtesy of Audi) and makes 409BHP. There'd be nothing in it other than marginal gains through DSG changes.
The only real differences, well apart from the somewhat muted standard exhaust compared to my standard exhaust, is that the power delivery is more linear. B7's have a noticable kick at 5,500rpm where the inlet flap opens and the exhaust valve also opens up. In the B8 engine, it's not there and you get that marginal gain in power from around 4,000rpm as the torque builds that you don't in the older engine. Personally, I like the kick at 5.5k as I've grown up with turbo cars, but for others it's less important.
It may also be that the test cars engine was still very new and would probably loosen up over a further 2-3000miles, so maybe was few BHP down
The DSG gearbox worked seamlessly, and makes a genuine case for the end of a manual stick. There's certainly less involvement in tugging a paddle, but I think (purities aside) it's progress. The only real concern I could level at it was that even in comfort, it was a little too keen to drop a few cogs when you're on the motorway and you just need a quick blip of the throttle to overtake and change lanes. I know I could stick it in manual and it'll stay in whichever gear I've put it in, but there's times when you're on the motorway or dual carriageway and you just need to stay one hand on the wheel and give the throttle a quick prod to get past something without going down 3 gears and passing at 7,000rpm.
General duties are good though and in manual it'll let you bounce of the rev limiter and change faster than you can blink with no perceivable let up in power. It's also quite nice to be able to go 2nd to 3rd mid powerslide if that's your thing.

General impression
I really liked the car and it's certainly a move forward from the B7, but I can honestly say that there were times today when I was pressing on a bit that I would rather be in my own car where the feedback through the wheel is there and I know that the front suspension is doing the same thing as the rear. As much as I like the DSG, the 7 speeds take away that 50-100 third gear window that my car has.
It's certainly a cracking car though, and as an everyday car, it's slightly diluted the RS experience to a point where it can be exactly that. A car that blends in, yet still gives you the power to overtake long lines of traffic or to leave a leather skinned old bloke in a C4S Cab standing at the lights with a bike on the roofrack and two kids in the car
I'm hoping that a car ordered with a sports exhaust and no Dynamic steering will get rid of two frustrations and the 20" Multi spoke wheels should make it look (in my eyes) perfectly blended between aggression to those that know and incognito to those that don't so I can leave it places at night without worrying that it'll attract unwanted attention like an M3 or Maser would.
If I wasn't the law abiding citizen that I am, I would be able to tell you that the limiter doesn't cut in at an indicated 155mph too, but of course I am, so I can't

My dilemma now is do I order the car straight away and take delivery next Summer (6-7months lead time) which will mean re-warranty'ing my car, which is going to cost a fortune through the dealer I expect, or just take the warranty and run it for the full year and only lose maybe a further £2-3k on it as it's taken most of it's depreciation and then order in the summer for delivery next winter ( a little birdy in the know also told me that there may just be a minor model change one year in with a steering change)
Whichever way I do it, I'll have to sell my car privately, as although the finance rates quoted at the dealer are very good, the part ex value they'd give me on mine is depressing. Still, I'd have 6 months to sell it.
Oh, one more thing. Not really important, but all the paint starting falling off one rear wheel. Dealer said it must be a defect and of course would be changed without quible on a customer car, but a concern none the less.

Anyway, sorry if this became longer that I'd hoped, I hope you enjoy the pictures ;

6am -5 start to the day ;







Out on the Evo triangle - a truly stunning bit of road, but much better in the summer (in my TVR )

I can see why Evo Choose this road and area for pictures








Shiny buttons you can't read ;


500 miles later, a rather mucky car on my drive tonight before going back to the dealer


My beloved B7. If I let this go for a B8, it's going to be a sad day to see someone else drive away in this, but if anyone wants to make me an offer, it's soon to be up for sale I think - wink wink

[Gizmo68]

Nice report Graeme

[sonny]

Fantastic write up, enjoyed reading that.

I can understand with your annoyance about the shiny buttons that would annoy me too esp after spending that much on a new car.

Shocking about the rear wheel!