>> Audi's A4 used to be the little guy of the premium
Germans, but it's all growed [sic] up now with a meaner
face and a bad boy under the hood. We've got the 3.2
V6. Let's also check the tech.
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[ Music ]
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>> Now the Audi A4 is loaded up, as you can imagine.
We've got the navigation, but today the map quality is a
little jaggy-looking compared to competitors. The fonts
are kind of tortured, plus as of this point, late 2008,
I'm here to officially announce I'm sick and tired of
their information layout. Here's the classic Audi
system. The stuff you want down the middle, you rotate
the main knob to go through the items, and then click to
select them. I get that. But I'm over these buttons in
the corners. Those correspondent to these four buttons
around the controller. There are better ways to lay out
information to correspond to buttons. This is not top
of the stack any more. Let's get on to entertainment
options. Now as you can see, we have Sirius radio, and
of course we have AM and FM, and if you notice the brand
on your speakers on the dash, we've got the B and O
audio package on here. Now audio is very subjective.
But there are three things that I always look for in
modern car systems. One, it can deliver a lot of base
that is controlled and not tubby. Number Two, do the
tone controls not let you go nuts with bad sound on
either the base or the treble end, and Number Three, can
it make satellite radio sound good, because sat radio is
brutally compressed digital stream and often sounds
worse than an MP3 library. This one holds it together
pretty well. And that same package that has B and O
audio also includes the Audi music interface. And that
means I can use these cables into a master dock in the
glove box to connect to what I have. Let's see what we
have here. Here's a female USB. Here's our standard
aux jack, here's a male mini USB. Ah, and there's our
dedicated iPod connector. Now check out this bit of
tech right here. This is called Audi Drive Select.
Auto is your standard position. Dynamic is their word
for sportier. You go again to individual, and one more
time to comfort. So comfort, standard, dynamic and
sporty are obvious. But individual is really
interesting. Check that out. I can set how the engine
and transmission work. I can say I want my steering to
be sporty, but maybe I want the suspension at the same
time to be comfortable. That is now saved as my
individual setting.
[ Music ]
>> The A4 3.2 V6 is in a word ample. It reminds you
that even in today's era of high-tech engines, there's
no replacement for displacement. Horse power is 265
with 243 foot pounds of torque, and 0 to 60 happens in
about 6.3 seconds. What you can't put into numbers is
how smoothly and confidently the engine gets that done.
Even more impressive when you realize the A4 is over
3800 pounds, has 6 inches more wheel base and 2 inches
more width than the old A4, but at the same time is
almost a second quicker. The Audi Drive Select really
does sharpen or soften the car's ride and instincts.
Power flows through a six-speed Tiptronic that in and of
itself is very smooth. But I found everyday driving in
this car could be kind of lumpy. You'll often catch the
car clinging to way too tall a gear when you need to
scoot. And when deaccelerating to a stop the
transmission seemed to bump in and out of gears as it
downshifted, making routine stops kind of a head-bob.
Okay, let's price our not so small and not so cheap Audi
A4. Because we got the V6, it's a $40,000 car -- base.
$4300 for B and O media rig, another 2500 for nav, and
another 2950 for this slick Audi Drive Select. You're
pushing 50 grand pretty easily. But it's a very
different A4.
