2011 audi A6 Avant reviews

Audi A6 Avant A6 quatrro 2.0 s-line 2011

I traded in a 325i Coupe M sport for an A6 salon 7 days ago and think it was the biggest mistake I have ever made. It looks good (white with blacked out windows) which is probably what made me go to it, but as soon as I got it on the motorway after picking it up the road noise was very loud. I went for a diesel and in 1st or 2nd gear it sounds like a bag of spanners coming down the road. It has sat nav, bluetooth, hands free etc., which is all ok but it’s not a patch on what I had in the 325. The sales guy assured me that I can connect my iPod via the Bluetooth and control it via the MMI - this turned out to be a lie. If you have the connection to wire it in you can, but if you are solely connecting via Bluetooth then the only thing you can do via the MMI is the volume. Want change albums? Then you need to get your iPod, unlock it, chose the album, wait for the sound to stutter for 20 seconds and then you can listen to the album you wanted - not ideal on a long motorway drive. Everything is just the little bit too uncomfortable; left hand arm rest is too low, the door is too high to rest your elbow one and the steering wheel is too thin to be comfortable. The steering is also WAY too light to feel responsive. The gear stick is not level with the arm rest so if you are using the rest it’s a pain to change gear and the petrol gauge is made up of LED’s, which looks great at first until you realise that the lights don’t reduce as you use the petrol, instead they only go out when you have used 1/8 of a tank of fuel - there are 8 LEDs. So you never see if you have 1/4 tank left or 1/8 of a tank lefty until its almost too late. I do like the screen in the dash board though. Behind the steering wheel as you have a lOt of choice as to what you want to see here; speedo, sat nav instructions, current music play back, telephone etc. All in all I much prefer the inside of a BMW as its that little bit more thought out in terms of comfort, usability and the iDrive is very intuitive, but above all you get NO road noise inside, which is something Audi need to work on big time with this car. I plan to keep it for a month or so just to give it a fair chance and if it doesn’t grow on me I will be trading it back in for a BMW. I will have to cut my losses I think.