[Jims5543]

When shopping for a E46 I drove a 323, 325 and 330 all in the same day. The difference between a 330 and a 323 is night and day. RickV and Fastpat were helping with advice, Rick warned me I would not like the 323, being as I am a speed freak, he was right, I did not like its lack of power.

To the OP, as far as Audi is concerned, if you really want an Audi make sure you have a warranty, and make sure you are near the dealership.

I found when I owned my BRAND NEW 2005 A6 from 2005-2008 that it would never take one trip to the dealership to fix any problem. Another annoyance was taking it in for scheduled services and findout there was a laundry list of recalls on the car and what was supposed t take an hour is now going to take 4-5 hours which after 3 hours of sitting in the "owners lounge" results in a service adviser coming out and telling you they will have to put you in a loaner car because they are:

a. missing the part needed for your recall even though you made an appointment a week in advance

b. cannotfinish the work in the time alloted

c. found another problem and need it overnight (which ends up being 3 days)


And you get to drive either a demo Audi that stinks of cigarette smoke (even though its a non smoking car as indicated by the sticker on the dash) or some POS Enterprise rental, if they are out of Audi demos with is quite often.

My dealership was an hour drive away (it was also the closest) the mount of trips I had to take with my "brand new" car was staggering.

As a matter of fact, I had to take it in for a final service prior to my lease return, the passenger tail light cluster was out, they made me wait for 4 hours to do the 25K service on the car and fix the tail light cluster, only to come out and tell me the new cluster off the shelf was bad too. I woudl have to come back in 2 days when they got it in.

I told them they could fix it after I gave it back to them.


Your results may vary.



BTW- the airbag light is on on my BMW as well, a typical problem for them, and there is a scanner tool for a couple hundred bucks that will help you track down the problem, I will DYI my BMW, something I would not dare do with my Audi.

I also replaced a window regulator, it took me 30 minutes to change and cost me $80. I am sure if another one goes it will take me even less time.

This is a 7 year old car with 80K miles on it and it has less problems than my brand new Audi.