When you start the car, male or female, car lover or not, the exhaust grunt of the 3.2-liter V6 engine pumps up your adrenaline, it sounds like a sports car. Shift to drive from park, release the brake, and once you cross 1,200 rpm hurriedly, there is a massive power exchange between the engine and the wheels, which sucks you in. You’re pushed back into the seat, your head tries to cave into head rest. The acceleration is insane.
Steering feedback is tremendous. It is nothing short of a sports car’s steering system. The thick rubber also helps in this aspect.
Three modes namely Comfort, Auto and Dynamic are the drive settings. Comfort mode is for highway cruising, in Auto mode the ECU sorts out the the car and the dynamic mode is for the late night thrill ride. The suspension on the mode becomes stiffer (by a small margin), the throttle response also becomes sharper and the gear ratios are re-assembled closer.
Good view of the road after the high seat setting boosted confidence. The graphical park assist system helped in commuting through thick traffic. The suspension was a bit bumpy and shaky. If you were driving on continuous stretches of bad roads, you would end up with a headache.
The ground clearance is very low, and we had a few minor underbelly contacts with the speed breaker even when we took them at 10kph. We learned the best way to take the speed breakers was by driving the car at an angle through them.
We took control of the gearbox using the paddle shifters and in second gear, the car easily raced past 100kph. The paddle shifters are not advisable for the inexperienced.
Adaptive braking system helps in slowing the car at any speed. ABS and EBD work together, its braking system is the best in its segment.
We’ve explained the sensation of driving an A4 as short as possible. The painful part is the fuel economy of this thing – An average of around 5.5-6 kmpl of hard highway and city driving resulted at the end of the day. Around 200 kms, 60-70 kms city rest in the highway should not bring out such figures. It’s not going to be easy owning such a car. 200 bucks of fuel could run out the moment you pass the first intersection.
[...] seat cold air circulator August 24, 2009 # # Gadgets # No Comment One feature we loved in the Audi A4 we drove a while back, has to be the air circulation feature which fires cold air into your back, through the seat pores, [...]
[...] a short video which we made during our outing with the A4 3.2 FSI a few weeks back (links 1 2 3 4 5). We’re still suffering from the withdrawal [...]
Awesome report, U guys must be nearly dead doing such live feeds in 1 day. Well Done.
@Dinesh Molasi – Unfortunately we don’t have the sales figures, but I see many of them on the roads of Chennai.
@Gagandeep Singh – Yes, we hope so too. Sometime in the future.
@Anand Nayak – as you said, this engine is one of a kind. Probably the most thrilling engine you could buy at such a price.
I am sitting in UK and observing that the Indian car market is booming, A4 sells well here and is a proven car from Audi, space is a bit on the lower side as compared to the BMW 3 series or the Mercedes C class but the 3.2 FSI is a raceing engine.
Liked the A4 and the roadtest, one request would be to roadstest the BMW in this style with live feeds.
The way the review was put up was rather unique,I guess no one has ever done such live stuff all day, A big thumbs up for the IAB team from trying this and at the end it looks too good.
I feel this is a nice packaged car and the review is well put up giving the finest details of the A4, could IAB provide the sales figures for the A4?
Great report guys,the pics also look nice, Audi is a great co and it should sell well here. Keep up the good work IAB team.