carkarl

I've been driving just two B5 A4 1.8T quattro 5-speed cars for the past 20 years, with only limited seat time in random rental cars and my wife's Corolla. The first was a 98.5 A4 sedan which I sold after about 7 years, and the second was a 99 avant I helped my brother pick out and eventually inherited from him. I just sold it this week, making it about 17 years of service to our family. To me they were great cars, and I guess I've been living in a time capsule feeling like they were always my "new" cars. The long-term maintenance sure felt like I bought the car over again :-) They were daily drivers and road trip cars, but very low mileage (under 6k per year) since I arrange my life to avoid commuting.

We just picked up a 2017 Q3 premium quattro. It's funny how much the cabin feels like a slightly wider and much more posh B5 avant. I am tall and can move the seat back just like in the B5 to get a comfortable driving position by making the seat behind me nearly useless. The luggage area is proportioned a bit differently but seems like it might be similar usable volume? The road feel is remarkably consistent for cars 20 years apart in vintage. I am amazed that there is such consistency in the feeling Audi engineered into these things. The biggest differences in road feel I assume are because the Q3 has stiffer tires, a longer wheelbase, plus of course a more modern chassis which is stiffer all around. It only feels a tiny bit wider on the road, and steering it through crowded parking garages seems to almost be second nature already. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have the ridiculously small turning radius of either B5.

I never thought I'd be an SUV person, but after a bit of a spirit quest to find a car for me and my wife, we ended up with this slightly puffy and tall wagon with an automatic transmission. Only about $10k higher out-the-door price than my 98 A4 was, yet clearly a bigger, faster, and more comfortable car. It is a shock for me to go from the 5-speed manual to this 6-speed tiptronic, but I think I will adapt pretty soon. It's very satisfying to be cruising down the road at around 1200-1400 RPM when my old A4 would have been over 3200 RPM. I haven't taken it into the hills to see how engine braking feels, which is one of my last remaining fears. I've always hated automatics with their bizarre sense of coasting without drag. As a manual driver, I expect the zero acceleration point to be much deeper into the pedal travel so you get pronounced deceleration on pedal lift.

Assuming the tiptronic and haldex quattro don't come to haunt me, I can already imagine the future, marveling at how it compares to some 2035 model year Audi with electric motors and enough brains to drive me around and keep me from hurting myself in my dotage...