TFIF: US Audi buyers not being able to buy what they want ... stand up and be counted !
 

I keep making the mistake on here of mentioning cars that you guys then tell me you can't get over there in the states, and that you're not happy about it (e.g. A6 Avant, RS4 Avant ... well, a full range of Avant's basically). Also, so many of you would prefer a manual gearbox (for some bizarre reason ;-)) but aren't offered it.

Well, Audi are making the 4's and 6's in Avant form for every model, right from the small engines, thru the S models, and all the way up to the RS models. The only one I think doesn't have the manual transmission (even in Germany) is the RS6 (C5 or C6).

I suspect that the only reason Audi of America aren't offering you these Avant's and Manuals, is because they think you don't want them. They must have the opinion that you all mostly like automatic, and aren't interested much in wagons. Audi Germany don't know, so they aren't going to push them on you. It's up to AoA to tell Germany what to send over.

What y'all really need is a place where lots of Audi enthusiasts meet up online and can get a petition together to tell Audi of America that they're not selling what you really want. I know of such a place ;-) When that petition gets sent by the "chief moderator of the audiworld forum", or the "chairman of the Audi club of America" (or whatever it would be called), that's got to carry some weight surely.

AoA (probably) aren't like the government who treat petitions as something negative that needs to be dealt with. When presented with a petition that basically boils down to "if you act on this suggestion, you'll sell more cars", then surely they're going to think carefully about it. Maybe they'll start offering the option of Avant and/or Manual. They may already be thinking of offering the Diesels. With BMW and Mercedes talking about sending Diesels to the states, I doubt Audi would want to miss out on that action.

Just replying to this post with what you'd buy if it was available from AoA rather than having to import it yourself would be a start, and an indication of whether the petition might actually get a lot of names on it. I expect there'll be lots of RS4 Avant's, RS6 Avant's, Manuals, and 3.0TDi's on the response list.

Nice idea, doubt it would have any effect thought. But, when I first started looking for an Audi...
 

I wanted an A6 2.7T avant. Too bd for me, that car is not available in the US,(and no I didn't want an Allroad). So, in the end I wound up with a 2.8 avant.

I wonder what the certification cost is on each model?

It's definitely not as simple as perception of consumer demand
 

Every model variant that's sold in the US must be separately certified. This means the full run of crash tests, emissions certifications, paperwork, legal hurdles, etc. It's very time consuming and very expensive. In order to justify this expense, AoA must either have a plan to sell enough cars to make the model profitable, or have a plan to market the car as a halo vehicle (e.g. R8).

Further, some model variants just can't meet US regulations. Case in point: that RS4 Avant we all lust after; the battery is located in a vulnerable spot in the cargo area, a big no-no in US regulations. To get that car to the US would not only require the usual crash test hoops, but would require significant re-engineering and re-tooling.

Too expensive to get EPA certification and all that. Volume too low.

We've been voting with our pockets
 

Over several years only around 10% of the A6's sold were purchased with manual transmissions. After the S6 and RS6 had been out a while they were sitting on lots unsold. Not in large numbers but as a percentage of how many were brought over it was a large number. While AW is full of enthusiasts the general public is less so. And, AoA reads this board so they know our desire. Problem is, the numbers have to justify it.

As kkemp and donp pointed out it's expensive to get certification and the cost often does not justify it in order to sell a low volume of cars.

As Audi has become more popular we are seeing more high performance cars being shipped here. I expect that this will continue as long as Audi sales grow.

Are you saying that EPA Cert applies to transmissions as well as engines? Isn't Cert just a
 

way to protect the domestic market as well?

Drive up the cost of the imports so the big 3 can continue to sell their garbage cars.

The cost is huge. Barrier crash testing is the biggest.

I'm sure it does. Each model needs to be certified, each engine, etc...
 

Then there's crash testing etc... That's the reason we don't get the B7 RS4 Avant for example... The trunk mounted battery doesn't pass USDOT safety regs.

Certification is more than just emissions, it must be crash tested as well
 

Different transmissions certainly behave differently in a crash, so each variation (manual vs. auto) must be separately crash tested.