Well, I decided to visit the AudiUSA site to price out my drem car, and this time i picked the A3 to play with.

I've seen a few of them on the street, and combined with the upgraded wheel and tire package, i think they look amazing!

now I came upon the point where I had to choose between the s-line with standard quattro and a v6, or the 2.0t and upgrade to quattro
(quattro is a must have, i dont care if your mario frekin adretti)

so, after some intense audiforum search action, and a strong opinion toward the turbo from car-and-driver, i picked the turbo.

ahh... drivetrain time...

my question to you now is, DSG, or 6spd?
some food for thought:
1. The DSG takes only 8 miliseconds (ms) to upshift, which is right on par, if not better than Bimmer's tranny on the new m3 (correct me if im wrong)
2. The twin Cluch adds smootheness to the shifts where the engine doesnt have to cut power, this gets rid of the super inefficeint torque converter (thank god)
3. However, the DSG also takes between 800-900 ms so downshift! 100x+ longer than it takes to upshift. (BUMMER!)

Now if im taking the usual nightly run up the local twisty, i would me much more concentrated on the downshift of my tranny rather than the upshift. I am gonna go out on a limb here and say that it is way easier to judge when to upshift, judging by how fast the rpm's are climbing, than to judge when to downshift because you have to worry about how much braking your applying. Taking that into consideration, which would you choose and why?

 

Question was debated and answered some posts ago. The DSG is absolutely amazing technology and the shift transition is super fast. You can always just tap the paddle and downshift/upshift on command so it doesn't matter that in "auto" mode it takes longer to shift downward. The true question is do you like to shift your car and drive a manual transmission or do you like the car to take care of the shifting most of the time. It's really that simple. If you prefer and automatic, buy the DSG. If you prefer the manual, then get a manual. Otherwise, manual drivers will become bored very quickly with the DSG. Cool technology, and you'll like it for a little while, but bored eventually.

Cheers!

Chef

BTW, I like to drive my car, not have my car drive me!!!

 

I concur with Chef. Left footers will always be left footers. I don't care if DSG could take you to the moon, I'd never give up my clutch.

 

Nudicles, I would actually take DSG if it could take me to the moon.

j/k

I'm a left footer who used to drive automatic before the A3.
I'm lovin' it so far.

 

i agree with chef, besides when i down shift, it's always two gears down for me instead of one gear down, so i don't know how long DSG takes to downshift two gears, and also with DSG, you always have to try to remember what gear you're in before you down shift, then remind yourself how many clicks to down shift 1 or two or even three, at least with manual......... well........ it's manual.

why am i babbling? neways i agree with chef.

 

this is true, that you can tell what gear your in with a manual, it just becomes insinct after awhile

but with dsg, you never know what gear, unless you look at the dash right?

 

I didn't think about shifting and skipping gears, but that just proves the manual v. automatic preference. I sometimes run hard through the first three gears then shift from 3rd to 6th. Occasionally, like audinam, I'll pull back from 6th to 3rd and rocket away. Not sure how smooth or quick this would be in the DSG? I test drove the DSG in the GTI and A3, but never went to those extremes. I also think your driving habits change with performance mods.

Oh well, I think we've beaten this horse to death again.

Cheers!

Chef

 

If I only had one car, it would have to be a manual. But I have other cars for Autocross, track, and backroad driving, so I'm voting DSG; The A/3 DSG is a superb daily driver/city bomber. I've noticed no downshift delay in manual mode.

 

does it have a "sport" mode like all the other audi tiptronics?

 

It's a little different. It will go into drive mode, which is full automatic or you can shift down one more to sport mode. In either mode, at any time, you can hit the paddles and the car will either shift up or down. The drive mode will shift very soon and keep economy high. The sport mode will take you to redline through every gear unless you shift on your own.