oskidunker

my wife wants a 2018 A4. Scuba Blue with sport seats and beige interior with dark wood inlays. According to the Audi site you must order standard seats to get this combination. Do they do special orders like with custom paint.

NorthwestB9

Yes, they'll do special orders for custom paint, but a custom paint job is an expensive $3,900. They have a few basic colors for free, several colors that cost $575 (mostly metallic paints), and the custom order. You do have to stay with the standard seats, though, if you want beige. Unfortunately, if you want the sports seats, not only can't you get beige, but it also drags in the Sports Package for an additional $750. Because I specifically did not want the Sports Package, giving a firmer sports suspension, I stuck with the regular seats. They are still nice seats, though I do wish I had the thigh extenders.

VM

Can't you get the sport seats without the sport package in the US market? In Canada they're available, ventilated, in the 'comfort seating' package without ordering the full S-Line sports package (as they call it here). Not available in beige though, only gray and black.

rsilvers129

For MY2017 you can get an A4 with sports seats without the sports suspension. Here is a new one for sale:

New 2017 Audi A4 For Sale near Boston | Massachusetts Audi Dealer

For 2018, they only offer sports seats with the sports package.

NorthwestB9

As rsilvers129 pointed out, you can get it in a 2017 model year, but not 2018. Audi isn't making the 2017's anymore, so you'd be stuck with whatever's on the lot. But if you buy the current model, you have quite a few reduced choices. There's no more comfort adaptive suspension. There's no more warm weather package. Sports adaptive suspension is limited to only Premium Plus manual transmissions. It just seems to me that 2017 was far more flexible, though 2018's included more items as standard. In 2017, you could get ventilated seats with the warm weather package. Now, you can't since the package doesn't exist anymore, and you have to drag in the Sports Package with the lower, firmer suspension.

You were talking about custom paint jobs, though, so you're not going to get a 2017 at all with custom paint, which is why I didn't bring it up.

rsilvers129

Audi has too many choices though, so it is a move in the right direction-away from Porsche and more like Honda or Mazda.

NorthwestB9

Fewer packages and more standard options are the way to go. Removing strong features, like the warm weather package (can't get sun shades anymore) or comfort adaptive suspension is not the way to go.

Still, Audi is better than most when it comes to fewer options. For example, I was looking at the cost of an E-class Mercedes as a possible option, which has a decent starting price for its class (the A4 comparable C-class just turned me off completely). But it has so many options, it's dizzying. I put together a package that includes most of the driving aids and safety features the A4 has and noted the options together added up to $25,000! And I left out a lot of stuff, too. The total price of the car was about $5000 MORE than a fully loaded A8L at about $99,000. Those cars aren't even comparable yet the E-class was more expensive than the A8L. Forget the S-class. A base S-class with almost nothing is more than a fully-loaded A8.

Since the C-class didn't interest me in the least and the E-class was stratospheric in price, I went with the A4. As I'm a gadget freak, the non-updated A6's and A7's were of no interest to me.

VM

In other words, they looked at what sold/what didn't sell and simplified the option lineup.

The OP wanted a scuba blue car. Ignoring the fact that I don't think beige is available with scuba blue, isn't it theoretically possible that a properly equipped scuba blue 2017 exists in inventory somewhere?

NorthwestB9

Yes, the wife wanted scuba blue but the OP sounded like he wanted a custom color. You can get a 2018 Scuba Blue with beige interior, so that's not a problem. I almost went with that combination myself, but I'd had too many beige cars in the past. So I went Scuba Blue with Nougat Brown interior instead. But yes, you can get beige. You MIGHT be able to find a 2017 with beige sports seats and blue color, but who knows what's left? But in 2018 you can't get beige sports seats at all.

rsilvers129

Yes. If it were me, I would search the entire country before special ordering a car. My A4 was found in NY, and I live in MA. There was an identical one in MA, and one in NH that was the same except ventilated seats and maple trim. I showed the dealers the three of them.