Reviews & Road Tests
Long Term Audi Assured A4 1.8T: Part 3
By by: David Herlihy
Apr 27, 2004, 15:46

Mileage: 21,200

As we stated in Part II, initial life with our 2002 A4 1.8T has been fairly normal. The car arrived in good condition, having met the Audit Certified checklist standards. This of course was not surprising given that at 14,000 miles the car could still be considered "new". In an extremely short period, we have put almost 5,000 miles on the car, a true sign of car enjoyment. Much of the mileage can be chalked up to out-of-town weddings and weekly Saturday trips to Aberdeen, Maryland (from Northern Virginia) to work on our VWvortex Project Rabbit GTI car.

We still stand by our original comments regarding the suspension on this car. It's proven itself out on the highway as being a comfortable cruiser while being able to mix it up on the back roads when needed. Our biggest complaint though, is the brakes. While the 3.0L A4 gets larger 12.5” front brakes, the 1.8T has to make do with 11.3". These smaller brakes simply aren't the greatest at pulling the car down from high speed as evidenced by the numerous times we've faded them out under heavy use. In the future we will be looking to upgrade the pads so that they can accommodate the higher brake temperatures generated by this car.

As we neared the 20k service interval, we checked the car into our local dealership. As it was our first visit to this particular dealership, we were very surprised to find a valet waiting to meet us at the door of the sales floor. The valet verified our appointment, looked the car over with us for any dings to the bodywork, checked the mileage and then sent us inside to meet with our service advisor.

Since 20K service requires an oil change, we brought our own oil and decided to switch the car over to synthetic. The service advisor noted this on the ticket. At that time, we also informed them of an intermittent problem with some of the stereo’s speakers that had been driving the car’s daily driver/pilot nuts. The speakers had reached a point where they were randomly cracking on and off with an audible "pop". Most of the time the right side speakers remained quiet and occasionally they would turn on. The local Audi dealership diagnosed the problem as a set of blown speakers.

Audi also set us up with a loaner car, delivered straight from the friendly neighborhood Enterprise guy. This was of course at no charge to us.

After picking up our rental, we went along with our day and waited for the phone call informing us of the car's status. It came shortly after lunch. I'll admit, the speedy response was surprising.

When we got to the dealership, the valet pulled the car around, which was cleaned, and the service rep thoroughly went over everything they had done. This inaugural experience with Audi's dealership network was quite impressive and we were satisfied with the professionalism and customer attention they gave us. Given the well-known fact that some Audi owners have experienced an inconsistency in service, we have to wonder, did we stumbled across one of those "jewel in the rough" dealerships that go above and beyond in customer service? Possibly.

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