audi bashing again

[Eliot Lim <eliot@lanmola.engr.washington.edu>]

I was going to let all this stuff slide since this is not the first time
we've seen rabid Audi haters on the net.  But then, since a few of you
got riled, I thought I'd say something.  How many of you remember that
guy from Locus?  It turned out what happened to him was that he bought a
brand new, fully loaded 5000 for sticker (or maybe even more) then had
the misfortune of it getting stolen. This happened during the 60 minutes
reign of lies, so resale values plummeted.  The insurance company paid
him a tiny fraction of what he paid for the car.  Who does he blame?  60
minutes?  No.  Insurance company?  No.  You guessed it.  Audi.

here's another....

[Peter Fraser sends the Audi flames to his friend at VWoA and finds out the
 following]

[about the dissatisfied owner]

> He had received poor treatment

> so Audi fixed him up with an appointment at another local dealer

> My friend seemed to think that Dave went away satisfied

> (although the design-related aspects he references may not be entirely
> solveable for his particular vehicle).

yeah, let's examine his complaints a little bit more... i will get to
them in a separate post..

> I'd also like to draw your
> attention to Dave's mention of his upcoming layoff

while i am sympathetic to his misfortune, i also wonder how much of his
dissatisfaction with the car is actually rooted in issues that are non
car related..

> Anyway, I feel that overall Audi tries hard (for me, personally, and I
> hope the majority of you all) - so I wanted to try to get the end of the
> story out there as well.

ok, here's me..

1990 Audi V8.  37K miles.  lost count of the number of trips to the
dealer. this car has had more things replaced (I actually consider them
engineering upgrades because the replacement parts like the transmission
and front end tended to be improvements) than I could have imagined.
how's my satisfaction right now?  A-1.  here's why:

because it is winter right now and the car is such a kick-butt in the
snow. :-)  when it snows in seattle, everybody goes into mass hysteria.
you'd think that a nuclear plant had just released radioactive gases..
anyway with 4 studded tires, driving in snow is hardly different from
driving in the dry.  great time to be out, because the streets are
totally deserted.

i never fully appreciated the car until i went out and tried all the
various japanese wannabes like the legend, q45, ls400, diamante etc etc.
not for me, ever!

the dealer that i go to is heaven-sent.  they try to give vip treatment
to v8 owners, and boy oh boy don't i get super treatment.  consider the
following:

no appointment necessary.  i take the car in whenever i want, anytime of
day.  i always get a loaner vw golf or jetta with lots of gas in it
without having to make reservations weeks in advance. (or subaru if i
ask for it) if i take it in too late, i drive the loaner home.  i return
the loaner at my convenience.

more importantly, when things "failed" it did not result in catastrophic
failure like leaving me stranded or causing an accident.  the greatest
inconvenience that i have suffered with this car is one hot summer day
the air-conditioning thermostat failed and i had to drive it to the
dealer without a/c.  when i arrived (w/o an appointment, btw) they got a
mechanic working on it immediately and fixed it within half an hour.
all the other "failures" involved driving to the dealer, picking up a
loaner and coming back for it when it was fixed.  might be a serious
inconvenience to some people, but for me that is a small price to pay
for having a great car.  the engine in particular has not had a single
hiccup since day one.  no idle problems, no cold-start clackity-clack.

i had a couple of bonehead incidents at the dealer as well, when one
time one clown overtightened the oil drain plug and the other clown
damaged the hole trying to get it out.  due to the very shallow design
of the sump, which sits very high off the ground, this part has never
been damaged through traditional ways.  apparently i was the very first
customer in the us to have the oil pan replaced.  anyway, they didn't
have this part and had to pull it off the production line in germany.
that meant one less audi v8 leaving the factory on that day.  the part
was shipped via Lufthansa directly to seattle.  it took several weeks
and was agonizing then, but in retrospect i think they did their best.

objectively speaking the car has had far more repairs needed than an
average car would have, but as far as i'm concerned, the excellent
relationship that i have with the dealer makes it up completely. and i
always say this in response to "hondacura is better because they are
more reliable" arguments:  i rather make trips to the dealer than to
have perfectly functioning mediocrity.  my ex-4000csq was actually
supremely problem free.

would i buy another audi?  not unless they get rid of servotronic or do
some serious development on it.  better yet, offer it as an option that
i can refuse.  (wanna pass that along to your pal, peter?) until then, i
will run the v8 until the doors fall off or until my wallet runs dry
after the 100K ext. warranty expires..  i think that if they can offer
such low volume cars like the 5 speed v8 and the 200Q 20V, they can also
offer non-servotronic S4s (possibly with less luxo-junk) for the die
hards.  just like what porsche is doing with the club sport type cars.
audi seems to be going in the direction that porsche and bmw took last
decade.. catering to the stock broker types and forgetting their loyal
enthusiast following.  but we see porsche and bmw pulling out and
getting back to their roots, so history is on audi's side i think.

(*chuckle* i just heard that bmw is going to put servotronic on the m5)

> Your thoughts?

more than you can digest, i hope not.. :-)


eliot