Buying a '99 A6 Avant ...
 

A couple quik noob questions? I am looking at a high mileage A6 Avant (in Canada). It has 216k km (or 135k miles) on it and was wondering about reliability of these cars in long run. The major timing belt, water pump, etc. service was just done 20 00 miles ago and regularly serviced at dealer. Private sale, people got newer A6 (so they like the car).

It has every option available ... and still within my tight budget. Any thoughts? Anything to look out for?

Realiability.. The hard parts will not fail you. The 'convience' parts likely will become less so.

I have same car...
 

...still drives nice but it is by NO means a peppy car. Like Kris said, it's reliable if reliabilty means it's runs fine but quite frankly it is worn (I have 68K miles). I have rattles and creaks, the instrument cluster screen is basically gone if temp is over 50 degrees, small stuff has broken but no "major" (ie $$$$) problems. Great for hauling stuff. REALLY slow w/roof box. I like it.

Joe

Sounds good
 

Thanx. That's what I was thinking. Love the quattro, but I noticed it wasn't a barn burner. Drove it in city and highway and bad roads (i.e. regular ones in Eastern Canada). No rattles, sounds as quiet and feels as tight as any car I've driven.

Did notice a few trim pieces and plastic button or two broken, but none on dash or console -- ideas on best place for minor parts/pieces (preferably in Canada)?

Funny,my '00 wiht 85k has none of those problems. Cruises at 100mph all day no problem..
 

They are pleyty peppy if you let them rev out..

the only things on my car that *currently* don't work are: ABS.

For the $ you spend...
 

You will be very happy with the car.
We got a '99 Avant in December with 70K on it. Everything worked except the seat memory, and the trip display in the instrument cluster fades when warm (apparently they all do that and Audi could care less).

Recently, the cruise control quit working. I'm confident that I could fix the seat memory and the cruise if the wife would give me the time to. She loves it.

In my opinion, they are underpowered, but as Kris says, if you aren't afraid of the higher RPM range it's not much of an issue. Take my opinion with the knowledge that we live at 5300' and the car commutes to 7400' daily. At sea level it feels like a rocket.

Parts
 

Dig around, and get a bootleg copy of ETKA, the Volks/Audi parts program. You'll need a desktop with a high-res display to run it, most laptops can't run it due to the requirement for a pretty high minimum screen resolution (1280x1024 iirc).

Once you can look up part numbers, try some of the parts sites listed in the maintenance section at Audipages.