bendingunit23

I had some time to check out the trunk and engine compartment while the dealship guy was moving other cars out of the way.

Unlike cars from a few years ago the engine wasn't covered by a huge sheet of plastic with a few holes for adding of checking fluids. The non power seats are adjustable much like a VW golf with a large knob for the seat back, a handle to pump your self up and down and a pull at the front for forward and back. The trunk was fully carpeted, a 12v outlet present, with a donut spare under a solid feeling pannel. While I understand the need to save space in this age of rarely punctured tyres and people who call for help anyways. There was a good 2.5 inches between the pannel and the tyre. A full sized spare would likely fit, and if not some minivanish storage bins rather than a block of styrofoam filler would be a good addition.

While i'm in the back the rear seat was a sixty/forty split with a small extra door (for skies most likely) this openned easily from the trunk but was impossible to close from the trunk.

On to driving and stuff: The dealership guy ( I know his name, I'm not using it on purpose) drove out of the lot, something I didn't want to do in a car I've never driven, as it's pretty tight in there and there was a 911 turbo 4S in there. Then stopped a kilometer down the road to trade places, here comes my first mistake. The hand brake pulls up verticaly and he didn't pull it far. So after spending a while trying to adjust the seat (electronical adjusted for height, angle, forward, back and lumbar, and heated) forward enought to comfortably get to the bottom of the clutch pedal I check for a gap in the traffic and went for it. Stall One. Take parking brake off and off we go. As I wasn't comfortable with the transmission yet I didn't drive it like I stole it there was also a fair bit of traffic on the highway. For the entire drive I found the transmission and gear shift wasn't quite what I had hoped for. One of the reasons I wanted to test drive and audi six speed was in my deams where I can make and modify cars how ever I want one plan was to use audi's 6 speed and all wheel drive. The gear shift centers it's self on 3rd and 4th gears so shifting to 1st or 5th you may end up in 3rd and the same idea for 2 nd, 4th and 6 th. It was also a closer ratio transmission than I was hoping for with 207 lb-ft of torque at low rpm I thought it would be geared to do 80 or 90 kph at just above idle, so it could go on to mach schel at the limiter, it was designed in a country with derestricted highways after all. At 80 kph 6th gear had the engine spinning at 1900 rpm and 5th 2200. I should have tried 4th and 3rd, 2nd maybe?

The amount of sound deading and the efficent quiet engine were also something that I and the dealship guy at times found un-nerving. At idle you can't hear the motor and crusing at 2000 rpm the lowest the engine seam comfortable to me you still really can't. it wasn't even competeing with the fan or radio. The brief time it spent above 4000 rpm likely around where the cams switch you could hear it but it sounded like it was about to hit the rev limiter and start throwing valves threw the hood.


The car handled well but again I wasn't really able to test that I did a bit of weaving around on the highway, but it was fairly busy and I was sensing bad things from the dealship guy. The back roads were mostly to tight to be able to spot the fast aproaching horse, person, tree, tractor, car or straight to make the car lean much or slip. I big empty parking lot would have been nice, but it was 11am. The bumpy roads showed the back end jumps around a far bit, too much if your after a soft smooth ride.

The Brakes: The pedal was nicely progressive, I didn't find my self using way to much or to little. I did one panic stop from 50 kph, perfectly straight. but not as quick as I had hoped, the ABS may be to blame for this as it cut in a half pedal. I was kind of hoping for the crushed by the seat belt face sliding off stop that my brother scirocco did when it had the 11" race brakes

Options avaible:
-'open sky system' its two sunroof, they are tinted but only in the color black, doesn't look good on a red car, looks weird on a grey car, don't buy it the AC is great.
-Bi-Xenon headlights, blind the truck/ suv drivers who leave their lights on buy this one.
-Extra airbags, ipod/radio things, better leather for seats different paints, your call
- Roof rails, are you really going to use them?

The good:
-heated power adjustable mirrors controlled easly by one knob.
-out board arm rest on the door. I like to rest that arm on the window ledge as mordern cars are often too high waisted for this it was nice to find a deep recess in the door, perfectly placed
-Air conditioning, I'm not a fan of this in cars as I find after about 5-10 minutes it feels like you've been breathing chemicals to melt your brain. I didn't find this in the audi. There were dual zone controls that were easly adjusted in half degrees.
-cup holder, were well placed between the gear shift and parking brake.
-center consol, well laid out and easy to use.

The bad:
-Too many options on the head light control
-Pressing the turn signal arm lightly makes it flash 3 times, regardless of what you try to do to stop it.
-Grab handles above the doors don't come down to vertical. This makes me nervous about pulling on them hard, and that's what they are there for.
-The speedo has lines every 5 kph until 70 and every 10 after that. At highway speed this is confusing and speeding ticket gathering as if you are one line over 50 your doing 55 one line over 80 and your doing 90.
- I couldn't feel the 207 lb-ft of torque in a bunch of its range.
-Out board AC vent blows right up the driver sleeve.
-Almost no engine braking at low rpm.


So there's the Audi A3