Fez2013

Didn't notice it on my D3, maybe it was addressed previously. That's good news bc the hesitation was my only issue with the car..

chiefironbear

I started a thread on this topic a while back and my sentiments are the same, the D4 still has not grown on me. The exterior of this car still is not appealing the lines are harsh while the D3's exterior still looks timeless despite the fact they're getting older. I'll hold on to my my D3 S8 for a bit, while hoping to find a R8 V10 below 90Gs or the D5 totally wins me over.

snapdragon

I wrote this 18 moths ago...
Today I handed back a newish D4 A8L 3.0TDI because my D3 A8L 3.0 TDI was in the bodyshop. Both mine and the loaner have the same colour paintwork and leather/wood interior, so I was at home. It was also good fortune that it snowed on the last day. I always thought I would skip the D4 and go straight onto the D5 as it always seemed like a big A4 to me, but upon seeing it and knowing it would be mine for a week, I felt really pleased. Inside the D4 is in my opinion even nicer than the D3 as you would expect, I really like the modern Johnny Ive era design and materials, tighter interior part fits and the massively updated look of the MMI, instruments and switches. The LCDs used are much higher resolution much brighter colours and better contrast.

There are a few things on the D3 that are not on the D4 and I missed them, these were the tinted sunstrip at the top of the windscreen, the doors on the door stowage pockets that hide your stuff (they are just open now like an A4), ther sun has loads of space to dazzle you between the rear view mirror and the sun visors, this was terrible, no third visor or other such mitigation here. The cup holders are no longer near expensive electronics as the electronics have all moved forward and up, but the apertures are really small and some cups don't fit.

Upon starting the car, there is slightly less vibration than my D3 and maybe slightly quieter, but the engine noise is still there. The gearshift is shift-by-wire, but can be a bit fiddly when in a hurry such as a 3-point turn with people waiting, and one time, I found it even turns the engine off and puts the EPB on when you select P. I also found that when I opened the door when reversing to check a post, the car shifted to N and turned off the engine. In a similar vein, it had engine start stop, I have had this in a Honda hire car and it was terrible, but the Audi A8 implementation is superb, as cranking time is barely perceptable. It works superby with this transmission. It seemed to stop the engine when pressing the brake pedal a tiny bit more than it took you to stop but bizarely, it would fire up again if you put on the EPB and then released the footbrake. Ordinarily as soon as your foot started to come off the brake it would start up again, almost just resuming where it left off like a paused CD. Consequently mpg in urban congestion was nearer 30 than 20 for me. mpg was silimarly over 40mpg rather than over 30mpg on a long run.

On the road around town, the 8 speed ZF gearbox shows how much more performance it can get out of the engine, especially at takeoff. The D4's 3.0 is only 10HP more than the D3's but feels a lot more. However it did sometimes bump on downshifts when rolling to a stop. But on the whole it was a much nicer gearbox. The road noise was sometimes horrendous. We had Pirelli PZero System tyres where you have directionals on the front and assymetrics on the rear, I'm not sure if these were to blame or the 19" 255 wide tyres, but on the motorway and on metalchip roads, in fact on any but perfect smooth roads, there was a terrible din that I never ever heard on the D3 with 17" 235s. What is more, the ride was very bumpy and thuddy. Every defect made a bump sound through the structure and it was generally very intrusive rather than cosseted for a car in this class (this was all in comfort mode). If I selected dynamic mode, it was really bad, but I can imagine it would be great on a perfect smooth twisty road but there aren't any in the UK to my knowledge. I also found the increased weight of the steering in dynamic mode a bit fake, it still had 'no feel'. Worse was auto mode where it would change steering feel so you never reallly knew how stiff it would be until you tried to steer. I want such things to be a known constant.

The headlights were bi-xenon and much brighter than my D3's adaptive xenons, especially in main beam mode which is rubbish on the D3. The MMI on the D4 was superb, as was the DIS. I like the way it shows you what you are doing when you adjust the seats by way of pictures/animations. It interfaced great with mobile phones for music and calls. I like the jukebox where you can copy mp3s from CDs and SD cards to the hard disk. The navigation has much nicer maps and features, and has a synthesised voice, so it can say anything, such as road and place names and they don't have to all be recorded and digitized and dubbed together like in the D3.
Best of all the voice command system now recognises words instead of having to spell everything letter by letter and can do a lot more. It also should a popup at the bottom of the MMI with suggested phrases in the context of what the MMI is doing at the time. I did sometimes find the MMI slow, such as when using speech dialogue the beep cue for me to speak seemed a long time coming after the lady had finished speaking and when switching sources or DAB stations it was a lot slower and would sometimes show a Please Wait message. Nice touches were things like "You are low on fuel, would you like to navigate to the nearest service station?" I didn't get chance to try the online functions as I didn't have a suitable SIM card.

I think the D4 is a great car, I was sorry to see it go and was expecting the D3 to seem like a tired old leggy barge when I got back in it, but both the wife and I found it not to be the case at all, and really appreciated it for what it was. It was surprising how it didn't feel 'alien' when first driving it again, the only things that seemed odd were the gear selector seemed to have an enourmous throw between gears (which it does compared to D4's tiny notches) and the throttle pedal seemed light and that was it. I was pleased it didn't seem noisy, it seemed quiter and more wafty.

It may sound like I am just slating the D4, but really I am just nit-picking, I really enjoyed having the D4 and we would like one once the depreciation has been paid by someone else.