3.0 A6 Avant long term ownership?
 

Newcomer here, pardon my question if it's been asked regularly. A search did not yield quite what I need to know: My wagon has 76k miles and I'd like to keep it unless it's likely to get really expensive. Aside from a slight sound from what sounds like the left front cv joint at tight left parking lot turns it has no issues. Apart from A-arm parts replacement and periodic service, how reliable it this car likely to be? Web data seems to indicate it's ok, but the local dealer service manager (a bit dramatic) threatens that the transmission may go out at any time. Is this car a candidate for keeping to 100k plus?

Expensive is a relative term. How deep are your pockets? An Audi is a very nice car, but it is also a very expensive car to maintain. Control arms, tie rod ends, timing belts, coil packs, CV boots, door sensors and the grand daddy of them all, transmissions all need maintenance or are known failure items. Your transmission could last to 250,000 miles. Or, it could go out tomorrow. The same can be said about any automatic transmission but the Audi transmission is very expensive, relatively speaking, to rebuild. At 76,000 miles, I wouldn't worry about it too much, BUT it could and has happened to others at lower mileages. If you can't afford the cost of a repair, better trade the car in on a Toyota.

Bob

Thanks, Bob. Checking out a cv joint noise, I took the senior tech from Audi locally for a drive and asked his big picture advice today. He was encouraging. He's serviced the car for the last 30K miles and and said the likely big ticket items were the torque converter and cat, outside of the normal maintenance stuff you listed. I think I can live with it, maybe extending my after market warranty with Warranty Direct for another 5 years. Thanks for your response.