thing about the maintence package is you only get every other maintainence, so you still have to pay out every other time.

 

Can you clarify what you mean by you have to pay for every other maintenance? Based on manuals the service interval is 5k miles then every 10k after that. If the maintenance is covered through 4 years 48k miles then that would cover 5 visits total.

 

uwhusky

Actually I originally wanted Brilliant Red for the same reason, $450 cheaper. But it turns out there was only one brilliant red with all the features I wanted in the entire state of CA. The dealer sales guy showed me his websearch. The Misano red car I bought was actually on the showroom floor. And in the dealer lights I thought it was just STUNNING. So that convinced me to go for the color choice. In the end I won't miss the extra $450.

Go through Costco. No haggle pricing :-)

 

misano red is indeed a great color, what i would've went with had i gone w/an 07 instead of an 06.

 

What great information people are posting and I really appreciate it!

I'm in no hurry, so I'm going to try Costco and solicit a few more dealers in to my search.

The marketing costs that dealer's add to invoice is an interesting thing. I've seen them bring me an invoice with this number added in and then I've seen the same salesperson not mention it at a later date when we start negotiating off invoice. I still don't quite understand it.

Anyways, all this talk about Misano red is starting to make me change my mind. My color choices are lava gray, white and then red (misano or brilliant, I don't really prefer one over the other).

I'll update everyone after I've actually pulled the trigger on one of these things.

 

One more piece of advice. Goto edmunds.com and price the car out. Edmunds shows msrp and invoice including all options. That is what I used to verify that the invoice number my dealer quoted was accurate.

 

I've been shopping around for a month or so for a new A3. I live in NYC, so I was hoping to buy right in the city from the local dealer. I went to 2 dealers closeby in NJ as well. My experiences showed me about $1000 price difference the farther I left the city. I also found the people at Zumbach in Manhattan the rudest and the least interested in working on a price. I even got so far as a guy who gave me lip about shopping the car around and was rude and me feel like a shmuck. This was when I was really close to making the purchase, even at a slightly higher price (why? cause in NYC it's a known fact that the service departments give perferential treatment - weeks sometimes - to people who buy from the dealer itself. Yeah, annoying.)

Ok, so after i was completely offended by the guy in Manhattan, I spoke to his Sales Mgr, complained and bitched a bit about the way I was spoken to, and he offered me the car at about $600 more than the guy in Jersey. The car I wanted was a 2.0T 6 speed manual with Prem Pkg, Cold Weather, Bose Audio pkg, and Open Sky, in Lava Gray. He found a car nearby matching my needs, and we settled on a price of $30,200. The lowest price dealer in Jersey was somewhere around $29,600. I also had them add in the iPod intergration kit for a crazy $595 (I really want this, and I didn't want to deal with it later, so I guess it's worth the money. Chock it up to convenience for all the extra charges I suppose...)

My diligency and research in this whole matter has led me to a few key buying decisions that I toyed with for a while: a) the Nav system is a pretty big rip off and I willlater add a Garmin unit which does way more for less money once I get the car, b) the iPod thing with Audi pretty much blows and no one really has all the info about putting it in and what it can do (seems like they do a lot of these in NYC, so that was another selling point for this pretty obnoxious dealer) and c) The S-line pckg doesn't ride that well on city streets so go with the premium pckg. In addition, New Yorkers are rude to one another, not to out-of-towners and I miss the dark blue from the 06's.

I may be off here in some areas, but they're just my thoughts. I'll let you know how the car is once I get it.

And thanks everyone for all the info from this forum... it helped me a lot.

 

though I know someone from Royal in SF posts here - one of his colleagues sends out emails periodically - today she advertised $150 over invoice for all A3s in stock...