As I write this the 2009 Audi A4 Avant is somewhere between Los Angeles and Calgary, Canada. Part of me is happy that it will finally be used for the purpose it was designed, namely driving surefootedly in snow and cold. But the Southern Californian in me shudders at the thought of this handsome car caked with cruddy, frozen slush. I grew up in New England and I know what winter does to cars.
Our buyer, Alex Roudinski, had wired us the $28,000 purchase price and flew in Tuesday night. I picked up him and his buddy, Doug, at the airport. The backseat and trunk were filled with the performance tires that had been removed and replaced with winter tires for the long drive north. Turned out these two Canadians-on-the-loose weren't exactly in a hurry to get back home. In fact they were detouring through Las Vegas for a stay of uncertain length. Road trip!
I've learned a lot by selling the vehicles in the Edmunds.com long term fleet. For example, I learned that people from Canada don't always look like they are from the Great White North. These three women are not from Rodeo Drive, in Beverly Hills, but Calgary, Canada. In case you don't know, that's about four hours drive north of the U.S. border in Montana.
I've been communicating with a buyer from Calgary, Canada, for the 2009 Audi A4 Avant and he asked if he could send a friend over to inspect it. No problem, I said, picturing perhaps some screaming cliche of a Canadian of a hockey player with missing teeth. Instead, I looked out my window to see a black Porsche Cayenne pull to the curb with low profile tires. Out popped these three "Canadians."
The 2009 Audi A4 Avant has been up for sale for a week and we've been contacted by some scammers and some real people. One call, which I almost didn't return, was from Canada. I checked the number and it looked like it came from a real person so I called back. Turned out there is a guy from Calgary who travels to Los Angeles. He figured he could buy an all-wheel-drive car here for less than in Canada since no one really needs it here, at least on a regular basis.
The Calgary guy asked for more pictures of the interior so, rather than bog down an e-mail, I decided to put the pictures up on the web in a Picassa Album. This is a good tool for people selling their cars since Craigslist limits the number of photos to four and AutoTrader makes you pay for extra pictures.
When we offer one of our long term cars for sale, it's always tough to set the right price. Sometimes, we schlep it down to CarMax and see what they offer us. If they offer "strong money" (as a car salesman might say) we cash out. If it's a lukewarm price we might put it up on Craigslist for a few grand more and see if we can get a quick sale.
The 2009 Audi A4 Avant falls into a different category. First of all, it didn't seem like a CarMax kind of vehicle and their offer of $23,000, confirmed that. We looked at our True Market Value, and similar cars for sale in our area (not many of them) and decided to list it for $29,500. We knew that listing it at $30,000 or above would likely bring a lot of silence. At $29,500, we would get calls. Or, in this new era of used car buying and selling, we might get e-mails or text messages.
There is one thing about our 2009 A4 Avant that I've always had mixed feelings about. The lugnut covers. Every time you need to access the lugs these silly caps have to be removed first. Part of me likes them for the clean, cosmetic touch. But the rest of me despises them, hoping I never get stuck on the side of road with a flat.
We use pliers to remove them now that the special hook-tool supplied by Audi has gone missing. I'd wager the small tool will disappear from most owner's cars over time. So what do you think? Are these caps worth the trouble? What would you do about it if this was your car?
Mike Schmidt, Vehicle Testing Manager @ 34,651 miles
I took the Audi A4 in for service last week. We are about to sell the car and figured we might as well take care of the maintenance and the broken visor clip that had been hanging around since October. At 34,420 miles, the car was close enough to the 35,000-mile service interval, which is considered a major service. The original price Audi quoted for the service was $509.19. It seemed high, but not unreasonable for a major service at a luxury-brand dealership in upscale Santa Monica.
When I was back in the office, I had a chance to inspect the billing estimate more closely. The dealership gave us a breakdown of the parts and service for the maintenance. Cabin filters, synthetic oil -- everything looked normal until I saw a line item for spark plugs ($64 for the parts, plus labor).
I come from a small family, and have a small family, so wagons have never been on my automotive radar. But on Friday, after picking up the 2009 Audi A4 Avant from its 35,000 mile service, I had it for the weekend. A couple months ago, I was lucky enough to drive the 2011 Mercedes-Benz E350 4Matic Wagon for three days. Although these are both German luxury-brand wagons, the contrasts between them are stark.
The Audi A4 felt more agile and responsive than the Mercedes E350 4Matic. When I was driving the Audi, I was calling the shots. With the Mercedes, I felt like the captain of a stately ocean liner, calling down commands to the engine room ("Lane change right!" "Aye, lane change right!"). I was, to be honest, a little intimidated by the Mercedes. It was as though I was driving my rich aunt's car, and there would be hell to pay if anything went wrong. The Audi felt more like a friend had tossed me the key and said, "Have a fun weekend." And I did.
Kia hired a former Audi designer to give its cars some snaz. Maybe Audi should consider an exchange program, hire some Hyundai/Kia designers to help with their baffling electronics interfaces. Yeah, I know this is more nitpicking about audio/info controls. I see your eyes rolling. I see them! Really though, c'mon...
A volume knob set off to the right of the gear selector in the center console. Two climate control knobs masquerading as volume and tune knobs. Multiple other commands accessed through the primary dial wheel and four-corner buttons aft of the gear selector - clockwise for scrolling up the menu, counterclockwise for down. Thumb the knurled wheel on the left side of the steering wheel to scroll on the small screen between tach and speedo, press to select. Don't push at an angle though, or you'll be zooming back up the list.
Touch, twist, thumb, press. Good grief, man. Working the audio and navi functions in the Avant keeps your hands busier than those of unsupervised 16-year-olds at the movies.
It took me a long time to warm up to our long-term 2009 Audi A4 Avant, and now that it's about to leave the test fleet, I'm borderline downright sad to see it go. Never fails, does it? You always want stuff you can't have.
More seriously, though, this wagon really does handle well. Never mind the electric-assist power steering that still feels a little off, this A4 wagon corners hard -- and it does so in a way that you are entertained even if you're just making a decisive left turn at some intersection. Last night, our Audi reminded me a little of an old favorite, the 2005-'09 Subaru Legacy GT.
That Subaru just happens to be on my used car shopping list. Perhaps I should add the A4 as well.
Like a Good Housekeeing-approved appliance, the long-term 2009 Audi A4 Avant offers several settings for toasting your buns.
Most cars have at least two seat-heater settings (often dubbed "Hi" and "Lo"), and it's not uncommon for premium cars to offer at three settings (usually a "Medium" stuck in between).
Four or five settings would easily impress me, so you can imagine my suprise when I saw SIX seat heater settings on the A4 Avant's LCD screen. That borders on ridiculous, though when charging premium prices and displaying a premium badge it's probably smart to overdeliver.
Why would I even be accessing the A4's seat heater settings in Los Angeles? Because it was like 51 degrees when I got in the car this morning, that's why.
Karl Brauer, Edmunds.com Editor at Large (and official cold-weather wimp) at 34,180 miles
I like the AC/DC song "Hells Bells" -- really I do. I mean, I wouldn't have it in my iPhone if I didn't.
Yet I may never listen to Hells Bells again after driving our long-term 2009 Audi A4 Avant for the past week. Apparently the Audi's iPod memory skills are akin to the rat that just keeps grabbing the cheese, no matter how many times he's been shocked.
It's not very often you can justify the extra cost of all-wheel drive in Los Angeles. But over the past two weeks we've had more rainfall in the City of Angeles than we typically get during an entire winter.
That's meant road closures, even worse potholes and plenty of scared Angelenos behind the wheel.
Too bad they can't all enjoy the confidence that comes with driving our long-term 2009 Audi A4 Avant with quattro. Other than the hissing road noise and the water on the windshield I can't even tell it's raining when I drive this car.
Just because I'm sure you have nothing better to do with your day. Here's a video of my waiting for the lights of our 2009 Audi A4 Avant to go off. You don't really have to watch it as it's just to show that it takes about 30 seconds for the lights to go off after you lock the car. (You can see that I hit the lock button twice on the key fob as the taillights flash.) This may not bother you but for a worrywart like myself, it drives me crazy. Case in point, the other night when I locked the Audi in my garage and could still see the lights through the crack in the door. "Did I forget to turn off the lights?"
Europeans don't share most Americans' disdain for the wagon, but maybe that's because they know how to do them right over there, as with our long-term 2009 Audi A4 Avant. Aesthetically and athletically, it's light years removed from the faux-wood-paneled family wagons that went out of style at about the same time as leisure suits in the 1970s.
The A4 Avant's standard Concert audio system also makes the AM/FM/eight-track setup of its '70s American predecessors seem like an ancient relic. But it doesn't come close to the ear-pleasing audio and eye-candy appeal of the Bang & Olufsen premium systems available in other Audis. And we couldn't get the B&O system in our Avant, even though we shelled out for the expensive $4,000 Premium Plus option to get the Multi Media Interface (MMI) for iPod integration and an upgraded Symphony head unit.
As much as I love living in L.A. I detest its omnipresent traffic. So whenever I have an event to go to across town, I always make sure to pick a long-term car that will make that stressful situation a bit more bearable. And out of the cars in our current fleet, I'd have to say that our Mitsubishi Outlander (the big one) is my favorite for these reasons: 1) Seat heaters, 2) paddle shifters, 3) Sirius First Wave.
And yes, our 2009 Audi A4 Avant has all of those, too. By the way, I realize that most people wouldn't cross-shop these. (The A4 is a $27K wagon while the Outlander is a $20K crossover SUV.) These are just my picks out of the variety of cars in our fleet for the particular purpose of dealing with rush-hour traffic.
The iPod interface in our long-term A4 Avant is pretty darned good. The graphics are clear and crisp while the menus are intuitive. One thing that bugs me is really quite minor, but a inconvenience, nonetheless.
Saturday we had a Tweetup/Meet Up/Gathering whatever you want to call it at Cars & Coffee. We brought the new 2011 Ford Explorer and a few of our long-term cars.
I was driving the Audi A4 Avant, Dan brought the Raptor and you'll catch a glimpse of one of our new cars in this short video from the event.
It was great meeting some of our readers. Hopefully, we'll do this again soon.
The best feature on our Audi A4 Avant is the revenge squirters. The windshield sprayers shoot straight out sideways. Perfect for getting drivers back who do stupid things near you. Or to wake up texters who are next to you at a red light.
Seriously though, somehow these got misdirected and make cleaning the windshield difficult. I tried to readjust them by hand but I couldn't see into the well below the window. I'll let Mike know so we can get them looked at during its next service visit.
