Evaneezer

Hey everyone,

First time on here, and as a soon to be Audi owner, I expect to be on a good amount into the future.

Anyways, I'm getting ready to buy my first A4 and am debating on the extended warranty. The car I'm looking at is a 2011 Premium Plus, manual transmission 2.0T, with 51K miles. Carfax is clean, 1 owner, no accidents, all regular maintenance was done. I expect to keep the car for 3-4 years and put 30-40K more miles on it (i.e. sell a bit before it hits 100K).

Are there any issues that have been popping up on this model that should push me towards getting an extended warranty? Or do you think I'm good?

Also, apologies if there is a thread out there already about this. I did a search and didn't find anything. Please point me in the right direction if this has already been answered.

Thanks everyone!

shs92645

I personally would never buy an Audi again unless it was certified. These cars can be very expensive to repair and maintain. Other extended warranties have normally proven to not be worth the money because of exclusions, deductibles and repair shops that do not accept the warranty. All of this said, there are also Audi's that run for miles without problems and normal maintainance is all that is needed. If you love the car and decide to buy it, at least set yourself up a savings account and put money in each payday to finance repairs.

Evaneezer

Thanks for the insight!

The car isn't Certified Pre-Owned, but from what I can tell the dealer is pretty reputable. 4.1/5.0 on Google Reviews and BBB gives them an A-. (Although their repair shop got some pretty bad Yelp reviews).

Is not having it be officially certified pre-owned a red flag?

Did you hit a good amount of repairs on yours? If so, around what mileage were you seeing it happen?

dk1

I would strongly advise some sort of extended coverage (either certified or Audi endorsed).

Just to give you a taste of what you can expect to pay for repairs (most of these were quoted to me by a dealer)
Single wheel bearing replacement - $800
Turbo replacement - $3000 (Audi extended warranty until 70K miles)
AC rebuild (compressor, new lines, etc...) - $2800
Catalytic converter - $2000 (federal warranty covers this until 80K miles)

In retrospect, if I bought an extended warranty from the dealer (quoted at $4000) I would be just about even now and I still would have 18000 miles to go.

shs92645

I owned two A4's - first one was a 2008 which I bought certified with 35000 miles. It was in the shop 6 times in 3 months - all for different problems. That was enough for me, so I traded it in for a 2009 - also certified with 36000 miles. The suspension started causing problems a month after I bought it - I'm not sure how many times it was in the shop, but it often was in for 2 weeks at a time. In 17 months, they never got it to ride properly. I also had the catalytic converter go and had problems with the paint. I got rid of the car at 73000 miles (I drive a lot) and have never looked back. My wife loves her 2011 A3 which has been a good car. I replaced my A4 with a Buick Regal Turbo and am totally in love with it - an awesome car.