First Audi
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1st Gear
Joined: Oct 2013
Posts: 1
First Audi
Hi Everyone,
We traded my wife's Mercedes CLS50 last week for a 2010 Audi A5 Cabriolet. The car is practically new, with less than 7,000 miles on it and several months of full factory warranty left.
I've admired Audi's for several years, but my own experience and that of several friends have kept me from buying one. My own experience was as a Mazda mechanic at a dealership which also sold VW/Audi from 1982-1986. This was a long time ago, but was during the unintended acceleration debacle of the Audi 5000. On the occasions I had to work on Audi's, I found them to be ridiculously over-engineered, especially their electrical systems. Compared to the Mazda's I worked on, the Audi's had 10x as many relays and circuits. They were prone to intermittent electrical issues that were very difficult to troubleshoot.
The more recent experience of my friends has been with frequent and expensive out of warranty repairs, most of them suspension or steering parts.
Despite all this, we decided to buy the A5. It's beautiful and one of very few options for AWD with a convertible top.
So far, I'm pretty impressed. The car seems to be really well built, and has lots of toys and gadgets (which I love and my wife ignores).
The 2.0 Turbo has decent power, but it sounds like some kind of combination of a tractor and vacuum cleaner. My only other complaint is that the steering feels a little weird. Not spooky or dangerous, just oddly weighted with maybe even a little torque steer thrown in.
I'll just drop in here to research issues as they come up (which will hopefully be a rare event). I'll go lurk in the corner now.
We traded my wife's Mercedes CLS50 last week for a 2010 Audi A5 Cabriolet. The car is practically new, with less than 7,000 miles on it and several months of full factory warranty left.
I've admired Audi's for several years, but my own experience and that of several friends have kept me from buying one. My own experience was as a Mazda mechanic at a dealership which also sold VW/Audi from 1982-1986. This was a long time ago, but was during the unintended acceleration debacle of the Audi 5000. On the occasions I had to work on Audi's, I found them to be ridiculously over-engineered, especially their electrical systems. Compared to the Mazda's I worked on, the Audi's had 10x as many relays and circuits. They were prone to intermittent electrical issues that were very difficult to troubleshoot.
The more recent experience of my friends has been with frequent and expensive out of warranty repairs, most of them suspension or steering parts.
Despite all this, we decided to buy the A5. It's beautiful and one of very few options for AWD with a convertible top.
So far, I'm pretty impressed. The car seems to be really well built, and has lots of toys and gadgets (which I love and my wife ignores).
The 2.0 Turbo has decent power, but it sounds like some kind of combination of a tractor and vacuum cleaner. My only other complaint is that the steering feels a little weird. Not spooky or dangerous, just oddly weighted with maybe even a little torque steer thrown in.
I'll just drop in here to research issues as they come up (which will hopefully be a rare event). I'll go lurk in the corner now.
Senior Administrator
Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 13,574
From: Lotsa places, currently Metro D.C., USA
Welcome. Worked as a mechanic during the sudden acceleration debacle, huh? Whadd'r you, 90? LoLz. I was looking for my first car as a working man, back then, and Audi's were WAAAAAYYY outta my price range. Fast forward 30-some-odd years and I've had a couple of Audi. They're STILL over engineered but, pretty much everybody's is, these days. Backup cameras, (factory) headrest TVs, early earthquake warnings, fifty-11 airbags... There's more to go wrong on a modern VW bug (such as it is, nowadays) than there was the Apollo-11 Lunal Module. Certainly more processing power, and almost as many miles of wiring, I'd bet.
Anyway, welcome to the forums. If you still wrence, we've got an officially_unofficial "Tech" group you may want to associate yourself with. We're working on dedicated user tags for the group, to make them easier to annoy. Send a PM to "ImTheDevil" of you're curious. He's the Admin fronting that group. We're on FaceBook, too, if you wanna put up with mostly random silliness with 0.01% useful information thrown in, unintentionally.
FTR, Audi makes the best interiors, bar none.
Anyway, welcome to the forums. If you still wrence, we've got an officially_unofficial "Tech" group you may want to associate yourself with. We're working on dedicated user tags for the group, to make them easier to annoy. Send a PM to "ImTheDevil" of you're curious. He's the Admin fronting that group. We're on FaceBook, too, if you wanna put up with mostly random silliness with 0.01% useful information thrown in, unintentionally.
FTR, Audi makes the best interiors, bar none.