I had to make a garage visit earlier than expected, the A3 was booked on Monday for the seasonal tire swap and a quick brake inspection but it became really scary on Friday afternoon. The brake pads on the right side are to be replaced and they are trying to find out what was making the moving part sound in the rear wheel.
So we took a replacement car for the weekend. We started with a 2007 Audi A3 2.0 with manual gearbox, but after a year of automatic transmission it felt wrong. Don't get me wrong, that car was fantastic... smooth handling, very good performance, stunning braking... but it felt like going back a century or two. Unfortunately, the only automatic transmission would only be available from this morning. So we swapped today... for a 2007 A6 Avant V6 3.0 Quattro Tiptronic.
That car is amazing, almost beyond words... it handles like a car half its size, you simply cannot hear its engine (I've yet to push it above 130 Km/h) and the equipment is quite complete and intuitive. If I had 50K to spend on monday, I'd order that exact model.
Showing posts with label car. Show all posts
Showing posts with label car. Show all posts
Saturday, 17 November 2007
Friday, 22 June 2007
Bad day
Until this afternoon, I was the "proud" and "happy" owner of an Audi A3 1.8 which I considered a decent small car.
Then the engine broke down while I was coming back from work. Like that, out of the blue, the temperature went from 60C to 120C and I did an emergency stop on the first parking zone I saw. If it had happened just a few minutes earlier, I would still have been on the highway. For reasons unknown, and over a couple hundred meters, it looks like almost all the oil in the engine vanished to another dimension of space and time without leaving any trace. Half the water of the cooling system also vanished for no apparent reason. The bets are currently on a blown head gasket (possibly with a secondary water pump issue and leaky tubes) and we don't have the money to fix it this month.
The car will be checked by the Audi Center on monday, but we've already pretty much concluded we will have to sell it (for junk, if it's too expensive to repair). This will definitely be the last car from VAG we ever have. For not much more than what we paid the A3, we could have had a nice Mazda 2 which drinks less and is usually, unlike my VAG experience, trouble free.
On a limited non-representative sample size of 2 VAG cars, 100% of them died on me from engine-related troubles. Both died while under 100.000km and being less than 8 years old. This, compared to the mileage I got from Toyota and Nissan, is simply unacceptable. My first car was a Toyota possibly as old as I was and had been driven over 300.000km. The panels were eaten through by rust and the direction column gave up, but the engine was still going strong (for a 1l engine, that is).
I'll see the repair quote for the Audi on monday, but from past experience with VAG it will be the kind of money I don't have. The price to fix my Golf G60 was actually higher than the residual value of the car.
From this afternoon, I'm a totally broke and car-less for an unknown duration. I'm still trying to figure out a way to go to work next week.
Then the engine broke down while I was coming back from work. Like that, out of the blue, the temperature went from 60C to 120C and I did an emergency stop on the first parking zone I saw. If it had happened just a few minutes earlier, I would still have been on the highway. For reasons unknown, and over a couple hundred meters, it looks like almost all the oil in the engine vanished to another dimension of space and time without leaving any trace. Half the water of the cooling system also vanished for no apparent reason. The bets are currently on a blown head gasket (possibly with a secondary water pump issue and leaky tubes) and we don't have the money to fix it this month.
The car will be checked by the Audi Center on monday, but we've already pretty much concluded we will have to sell it (for junk, if it's too expensive to repair). This will definitely be the last car from VAG we ever have. For not much more than what we paid the A3, we could have had a nice Mazda 2 which drinks less and is usually, unlike my VAG experience, trouble free.
On a limited non-representative sample size of 2 VAG cars, 100% of them died on me from engine-related troubles. Both died while under 100.000km and being less than 8 years old. This, compared to the mileage I got from Toyota and Nissan, is simply unacceptable. My first car was a Toyota possibly as old as I was and had been driven over 300.000km. The panels were eaten through by rust and the direction column gave up, but the engine was still going strong (for a 1l engine, that is).
I'll see the repair quote for the Audi on monday, but from past experience with VAG it will be the kind of money I don't have. The price to fix my Golf G60 was actually higher than the residual value of the car.
From this afternoon, I'm a totally broke and car-less for an unknown duration. I'm still trying to figure out a way to go to work next week.
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