Tag: Audi

I had the pleasure of driving a loaner car for the past week. All the excuse I need to dust off the Car Chronicles series!

My Audi Q5 has been great. I’m nearly two years into my lease and other than a few annoyances, I have been extremely happy with it.

Late last year I received a notice for a recall on the backup camera. When I called to schedule an appointment in early January, the dealer told me the repair would take at least a day, they were only scheduling two per day and the next opening was in February, and I would get a loaner while they had my car. They recommended I add on anything else that needed attention, so we included my annual maintenance and I asked that they check out my tailgate, which had been opening and closing erratically for awhile.

I got excited when I heard the scheduling lady mention a loaner. I figured Audi probably gives you a nice car, right? A few years back when my base trim level Suburban required an extensive repair, the Chevy dealer gave me a high-end Tahoe. That worked, as when the Suburban lease came up we replaced it with a more expensive and nicer Tahoe.

It is 2023, though, and I wondered if inventory issues would affect what Audi could give me.

Last Thursday I dropped off the Q5 and my service rep handed me the keys to a brand new (195 miles) A5 S-Line Sportback. It was pretty sweet!

L was excited when I picked her up from school in it that day. She got a big, silly grin on her face when she saw it. I noticed a lot of kids giving it long looks as they walked to their cars.

The A5 has the exact same engine as my Q5, but by being so low and sleek and weighing about 1000 pounds less, it seems significantly quicker. When you punch it, it goes. I never went for it too hard, as I was always in traffic, but I got from 0–50 a second or two faster than I can in the Q5. The engine also sounds a lot different. It definitely has a sportier growl than my SUV.

I figured my car would be ready Friday afternoon, so after lunch I took the A5 out on the highway and headed north. I drove about 30 minutes north of Indy but never could get out of traffic to really drive fast. I tried to come flying down an entrance ramp, but I timed it poorly and had to aggressively brake to squeeze in between an RV and a couple tractor trailer rigs that were stacked up. Once there was a clearing to the left, I floored it and zoomed past them.

Just good, clean, fossil-fuel eating fun.

Turns out that tailgate issue required the dealer to order some new parts, which didn’t arrive until Wednesday morning. So I got to keep the A5 for six days. As fun as it was, I started getting nervous that someone would hit me, I would blow a tire on one of Indy’s famous potholes, or something else dumb would happen. I still enjoyed zipping around in it, but didn’t drive it any more than I had to.

I’m a committed SUV guy. I both enjoy and feel safer sitting up above traffic a bit. The Q5 is no beast, but you sure have better visibility than in the A5. I could never really get comfortable sitting so low, always nervous that something was happening around me that I couldn’t see.

My biggest complaint was that there was no grab bar to assist getting in and out of the vehicle. I could drop in pretty easily, but it was a chore getting out. It very much reminded me of my stepdad’s Corvettes, and the process to unfold my body and find something to gain leverage with to pull myself out of the driver’s seat. There needs to be the same handle that is on the inside frame of most SUVs.

Another semi-bummer was how the A5 and Q5 are near mirror images of each other inside. My car is a higher trim level, so where I have leather seats that are heated and cooled, the A5 has cloth seats that are only heated. L actually liked the cloth seats better because they weren’t as cold when she first sat on them. So while I was very comfortable with where everything was, when dealing with the electronics it didn’t feel new and exciting compared to what I’m used to.

The S-line stuff is purely cosmetic; it isn’t a true S5 with the bigger engine. I did really like the S-line steering wheel wrap. That sounds dumb, but it sure felt better than mine.

The A5 was already set to the Dynamic driving mode, which I stuck with for the week. I’ve read a lot about Audi’s driving modes and people argue about how much they actually alter the driving experience. I normally drive in Auto, which adjusts depending on road conditions. It’s tough to compare the two since they are different cars and I don’t know how much of the variance in feel was based on car vs drive mode.

The A5 was super nice to drive. It was gorgeous, smooth, fast, had that nice engine growl, and cornered amazingly. I would happily drive one again for a few days if someone offered one to me. My old man body can’t take getting in and out of something so low, though, so I don’t think when I begin looking at cars again in about a year the A5 will be on the list.

Last week was the one year anniversary of me acquiring my Audi Q5. As my car search series was immensely popular – I believe at least 10 people read it – I feel like I owe those fans a one year update.

Aside from some minor quibbles, I am still deeply in love with my Audi. It isn’t perfect, but it is still a pretty fantastic ride.

It is mostly an around town vehicle, and it handles that nicely. Indy’s roads are crap, so the suspension has taken some hits from potholes and other infrastructure failures. But it still rides nicely. It is a delight to occasionally find a stretch of newish pavement with a generous speed limit so I can enjoy the smoothness of the ride. Even after a year its speed can surprise me, and I’ll look down and see I’m going a lot faster than I thought.

The only true road trip I’ve taken in it was to Nashville last fall. Engaging the adaptive cruise control along with the other driving aid/safety features made for an exceptionally easy trip. L and I have two basketball trips coming up and I’m looking forward to driving those.

One of the biggest reasons for moving to a smaller vehicle was for improved gas mileage. I’m pleased to report that I continue to average between 7–9 more miles per gallon compared to my Tahoe or Suburban. On our trip to Bloomington last week I was getting between 31–32 mpg in the short stretches when I could get it above 70 mph. Around town I’m almost always right at 23 mpg. The Chevys checked in around 16 in the city and in the low 20s on the highway. That difference somewhat mitigates the fact I’m pumping premium fuel into it.[1]

I mentioned some quibbles. Most of those are purely personal choices which you have to deal with no matter what car you drive. My biggest frustration is with the way Audi handles technology, or at least the back end of it. The user interface for the entertainment and other electronic systems are great. But connecting to Audi’s online services is truly a nightmare. I was never able to get connected last year, as the system was down for weeks, so I gave up. When I was in for service last week the dealership couldn’t get me connected even though the system was available. I got a call Monday that I should be good. I am finally able to log in and connect my account to the car. But the features of that service are not all flowing through. Apparently this is not unusual for Audi. Hell, their main website sucks and my dealer’s is a nightmare to navigate. They make great cars but need to partner with Apple or someone to get their tech on point.

I’ve had some of the electronics flake out on me a couple times. Once, while driving, all my doors unlocked, the windows rolled themselves down, and the warning indicator for every electric system came on. I could still drive normally and safely, but the central display kept scrolling through those warnings without pause. When I found a parking lot, I pulled off the road, turned the ignition off, waited a few minutes, then turned it back on. Everything came back on normally. I guess I just needed to reboot. I wonder if it runs on Windows 95 or something.

I’ve had the automatic braking system slam my car to a halt twice. Once it was when a car pulled in front of me from the neighboring lane at a red light. I saw the car coming but the system engaged the brakes before my foot hit the pedal, which was great. Another time it engaged while I was making a left hand turn and there was no traffic or other obstacles in my way. That was concerning. I’ve also found that system checks out if it is raining too hard. Which makes sense. If it can’t get a good signal you don’t want it stopping you because it thinks sheets of rain are another car.

I hate that you can’t check your tire pressure at any time. The car will only send you a warning if it believes a tire is low. And if someone servicing it doesn’t reset the system, it will throw a warning at you a couple days later. That happened last week on our way to Bloomington. Between games I went and bought a pressure gauge and checked all the tires. They were fine. Because the dealer had failed to tell the system the pressures had changed after rotating the tires, the computer thought at least one of them was low. Super annoying.

I turned off a few of the safety features, notably lane assist. I found it to be far more aggressive than the one on my Chevys. Where the Chevy system would ease you back to center if you got close to a lane marker, the Audi yanks you back. Worse, in conditions where lanes widen out and markers disappear, at an exit ramp for example, it can get confused and fight you from keeping your intended path. I don’t think it’s actually dangerous, but it feels dangerous when it fights you.

I’ve had some issues with the rear lift gate. The dealer told me the struts that brace the gate needed to be replaced. The repair is under warranty, which is cool. What is not cool is that the parts have to come from Germany and may not be here for weeks.

Speaking of that, I certainly got my Audi at the right time. I did not know that car carrier that sunk in the Atlantic a couple months back was carrying 4000 Audis. The sales guy I talked to said he had a client who had been waiting a year on an e-tron and it was now sitting on the bottom of the ocean. Then they had another ship go through a terrible storm last month that damaged over 40% of the vehicles it was bringing to North America. I read a couple weeks back that Audi is also delivering some vehicles without certain features because of the microchip shortage. I know these problems aren’t unique to Audi – well, losing cars in the Atlantic isn’t universal – but it is still nice to have one rather than be waiting on one.

My girls would tell you they wish the Audi was a little bigger. The back seat is wide enough, but the hump created by the drivetrain makes whoever sits in the middle really have to squeeze in if they are sitting three across. We solve that by usually taking S’s Grand Cherokee if all five of us are riding together.

All relatively minor issues. One year in the Q5 remains my favorite car I’ve ever driven.

Today marks two weeks in as an Audi owner. I owe you faithful readers of this series some thoughts.

The honeymoon is not over; I still love, love, love my Q5. It is pretty much everything I was looking for in a replacement for my Big Chevys.[1] Nimble, quick, comfortable. It has just enough sportiness to make it fun while remaining just big enough to have use as a family utility vehicle. All five of us rode in it to C’s graduation Wednesday and there were no complaints from the girls as they sat three across in the backseat.

It is far from a small car, but after six years in the Big Chevys, it feels tiny to me. According to my handy-dandy car research spreadsheet, the Q5 is 20 inches shorter in length, six inches narrower, and nine inches shorter in height compared to the Tahoe. I knew these numbers. But they really hit me the first time I walked into the garage and could actually see S’s Grand Cherokee on the far side. The Tahoe completely blocked her car from view. I should have taken a Before picture so you could see the difference, too.

Suddenly there’s a lot more space in our garage!

The Q5 is fun to drive. It accelerates like a whisper. Somewhere in my research I read that you have to be careful because it is very easy to be traveling faster than you think you are. Sure enough, I’ve caught myself cruising along thinking I was going right around the speed limit when I was actually beating it by 10–15 MPH. Unless you really stomp on the gas, it is a quiet, smooth trip through the gears to get up to speed.

The only minor driving quibble is how the engine can be a bit sluggish after it shuts down at a red light. There is a noticeable lag in acceleration as the systems come back up. I believe this is a common issue with most cars that have the Auto Stop function enabled. In comparison, however, S’s Grand Cherokee seems to return to full power much quicker when you step off the brake.

While the driving experience is important, it’s all the bells and whistles that make getting a new car fun.

My sales guy took me on an orientation drive so he could show me how the adaptive cruise control and driver’s assist technologies operate. Under the right conditions they bring the car really damn close to being self-driving. With him in the driver’s seat and all the features engaged, we travelled for several miles, in traffic, with him barely having to use his feet or hands. The forward cameras locked onto the car ahead of us and accelerated or braked to keep us following at a safe margin. The side cameras kept us in our lane by nudging the steering wheel. He did have to take control when we came to a curve or intersection but otherwise he let the car do almost all the driving. At one point he even turned his body completely around like he was getting something out of the backseat and we kept cruising along at 45 with cars all around us.

I did not like this at all! I’m a pretty controlling driver and all of this trust of the car’s systems was too much for me. He asked me if I wanted to give it a shot and I politely declined.

I have used a subset of these features, Traffic Jam Assist. The main road we take to St. P’s every day is under major construction, reducing it from three lanes to a single one and turning what was normally a seven minute drive into closer to 15 minutes of stop-and-go traffic. I’ve used TJA to control the car at these low speeds. I keep my hands on the wheel but the Q5 brakes and accelerates on its own as the traffic crawls forward. Although a little unnerving the first time it eases the brakes on, I can deal with this at 15 MPH and slower.

Like most modern cars the Audi has a robust back-up camera and warning system. Where my Tahoe only had sensors on the front end, the Q5 has a forward-facing camera as well, which makes it much easier to pull into the garage without bumping into golf clubs, bikes, or walls.

It also has a top view camera system, which combines all the car’s various cameras and sensors to form a computer approximation of what your position looks like from above. It’s crazy! And super useful. The girls very much enjoy how the wide angle cameras on the sides of the car make objects directly to your right and left look 10 feet tall as it distorts them. This is a great aid for getting into and out of tight parking spots.

As soon as I got the car our weather turned hot. Which made me glad I sprung for the sports seats with ventilation. I’ve always been a fan of ass warmers in the winter. Now I have an ass cooler, too!

I love having wireless Apple CarPlay, although sometimes it can be a little wonky.

The Q5 also came with three months of free SiriusXM All Access service. I already pay for the lowest tier of SiriusXM, so it is nice to have all the channels for awhile. I’ve had the Pearl Jam station on a lot through the first two weeks. Sirius did mess up switching my account over and I had to spend an hour on their support chat line getting the trial re-started after they wiped it out. That’s a ding to Sirius, not Audi. This is at least the second time they’ve messed up moving our subscription from one car to another. You’d think it wouldn’t be so difficult.

This is our sixth car that came with a SiriusXM trial, and the Q5 is the first to come with the Tune Start feature. It’s pretty dope. Once your car has been running for a few minutes and everything gets loaded, each time you switch to one of your favorite stations, the station will back up to the beginning of the current song so you can hear the entire thing. Because what is worse than switching to a station and hearing the last 10 seconds of your favorite song?

I did not expect to enjoy the panoramic sunroof as much as I do. Normally I hate having sun shine directly down into my old man eyes while I drive, even with sunglasses on. However, the tint on the Q5’s glass seems to be a shade or two darker than the Tahoe’s, making it much more tolerable to drive with the sun shade open.

I knew there would be a large difference in cargo space. I was surprised in how those differences presented themselves.

To take full advantage of the Tahoe’s back end, you had to drop the third row. If you had more than four passengers, you really did not have much cargo space. From a fully capacity passenger aspect, the Q5 actually beats the Tahoe. Of course, if you dropped both back rows in the Tahoe you could buy enough supplies at Costco to last you a year and still have room to spare.

What I did not expect was the difference in cargo space in the main cabin. There are a few nooks and crannies to stash small items in the Q5. But the space beneath the center console is maybe a quarter the size of the Tahoe’s. I used to joke Chevy needed to put a drain in the Tahoe’s center console so you could fill it with ice and cold drinks for long drives. That huge space meant I crammed way too much crap into it, so it was good to reduce the clutter. I do have to be much more choosey in what I stash under my elbow in the Audi. I can squeeze in some Kleenex, glasses cleaner, car wash tickets, a few masks, and the phone of one kid and that’s about it.

Another slight bummer that I was fully aware of going in is the fuel situation. I am getting much better mileage, between 5–7 more miles per gallon at this point. However, a turbocharged German engine requires premium fuel. Which ain’t cheap. I refuse to crunch the numbers to see if the better efficiency is saving me enough to balance the higher cost of the fancy gas. Sometimes it’s better not to know.

My Q5 came with crossbars you can attach to the roof rack. I waited a week to put them on, keeping a careful eye on other Q5s I saw on the road to decide if I liked them better with or without the crossbars. I think the car definitely looks cooler with them on, but unfortunately they cause quite a noticeable whistling sound when you get above 40 MPH.

Nice crossbars, bro.

Those are my assorted thoughts after two weeks in my new car. There will always be minor annoyances that rub up against your personal quirks. I’ve found those to be rather few so far. I’m sure had I gone with the Mercedes GLC–300, or eventually test driven and picked the BMW X3 or Volvo XC60, I would be saying similar things. But the Audi Q5 is nice enough that I have zero regrets about jumping on the chance to get into one when I did.

If you’ve read my blog entries over the years, you know I can often be a little wordy with the background before I get to my point. I believe context is important and want to fully inform my readers.

However, sometimes it is best to cut to the chase. So…

Yep, I am now the proud lessee of a 2021 Audi Q5.

It’s pretty fucking sweet.

We picked it up Thursday, so it is still early days. I’m pretty sure I’m totally in love with it. I’ve also been listening to Zooropa a lot.[1]

For today’s entry I suppose I need to explain how I went from looking to lease a new car in July to actually driving one on May 13.

While my plan was to ride out the final months of our Tahoe lease, in the back of my mind I was hoping that, at some point in the process, a dealer would make me an offer to end that lease early. The Acura sales dude made some noise about that after I drove the RDX. But since I didn’t love that car, I didn’t press the issue.

As we chatted after my Q5 test drive, the Audi salesman said there were options for getting me out of my lease. For the next couple days we went back and forth via phone, text, and email to clarify some questions and lock in a few details. Once I identified the exact car I wanted, I told him we were ready to move forward if he could deliver on helping with the Chevy lease.

Long story short, my sales guy was formerly employed by the Chevy dealership I leased it from. Although Audi did not want to take the Tahoe as a trade in, he worked his old buddies to get them aligned with our interests. His efforts included tracking down his closest friend at the Chevy dealership on a beach in Florida to kick off the process, making multiple calls to find the right guy to deal with here in Indy, then clearing the path so I could show up at the Chevy dealership and walk out with an agreement for them to buy me out of the lease.

I was kind of shocked at how easy it was. Chevy wiped out our last two payments while Audi was giving us credit for one of those payments toward the Q5 price. Chevy wasn’t making me replace the tires, which were on their last legs. Or fix the scrapes and dings and scratches on the body. Or make the car go through the normal post-lease inspection process. That saved us a lot of money, and helped to make up for the extra dough we’ll be paying Audi since they don’t subsidize their leases as much as Chevy does.

I’m don’t know if the Chevy dealership was willing to work with us because they owed my salesman a huge favor, because their inventory of both new and used cars is so lean at the moment, or just because the patron saint of auto leases was looking out for us. Whatever the explanation, everything sure lined up exactly right over the past week.

Regardless of how it came to be, my life as a Tahoe owner is over and I am now zipping around in a fine German automobile.

And so my search for a new car ends a couple months earlier than expected. This series isn’t over yet, though! I figure I owe you one or two posts on life as an Audi owner. Be looking for those soon.

When I began this process last fall, Audi was at the top of my list. It didn’t matter which Audi. The Q3 if I went with a subcompact. The Q5 if I went compact. The Q7 if I wanted to blow out the budget.

Once upon a time, say in the early ‘00s, Audis were my ultimate car, specifically a well-appointed S4. For years I’ve loved the looks of the Q series. We have friends who currently have three Audis in their family and zero complaints. A sister-in-law stored her A4 in our garage when she went overseas 15 or so years ago. I drove it once a week to keep the battery charged and really liked it. While Audis are fancy, I feel like they are at least 28% less pretentious than a BMW or Mercedes.

Three things changed my thinking, though.

First, Audi tweaked their body styling for the 2021 model year. To my eyes, the Q’s lost some of their grace and elegance in the process.

Second, most car magazines/review sites seem to prefer BMW and Mercedes when ranking German SUVs.

Third, the website of my local Audi dealer is atrocious. There are constant nuisance pop-ups, pop-ons, and pop-overs. The basic design of the site is not user friendly. They also recently stopped posting pictures of every new car on their lot, instead using the same stock photo of an ugly green Q5 to represent the bulk of their inventory.

This is not the color I am interested in.

Why would you choose the worst color you offer to promote your car? Are you trying to scare customers away. “We only have ugly cars. There’s a Volvo dealership to the right and a Lexus dealer to the left if you want something beautiful.”

For much of the winter, I removed Audi from my list.

I eventually came to terms with the physical changes and realized that even though the Q5 often gets rated just behind the X3 and GLC, it was still near the top of the class and deserved a look.

Last Friday I took one for a spin. I figured it would just reinforce that the Mercedes GLC was the car for me. Funny how things work out…

My first two test drives covered the same route, a 10–15 minute jaunt through Carmel. I use a highway entrance ramp to accelerate quickly, whip through some roundabouts into neighborhoods to test cornering and the residential drive experience, then onto another ramp to return to the dealership via the highway.

At the end of my loop Friday my sales guy suggested we take one more loop so we could play with the car’s driving mode options.

Nice!

These different driving modes certainly make the ride feel different. But in a 10–20 minute test drive, I can’t tell if they make the ride better. While cool to have, I don’t know that I would swap through the different settings very often.

My next observation may not make much sense. The Q5 is almost the exact same size as the Mercedes GLC. They weigh roughly the same. They have very similar engines, although with different transmissions (9-speed GLC vs 7-speed Q5). Yet the Q5 felt a lot more like a car than the GLC.

I know nothing about the mechanical side of cars. But my best guess is differences in the cars’ drivetrains account for this. Both are all-wheel-drive. But the Audi handles torque much differently than the Mercedes and has more freedom in how it allots the power across the wheels. Maybe this makes it feel a little more nimble, especially in turns, and thus car-like? Or maybe my vertigo was acting up more during one test drive than the other and I literally have no idea what I’m talking about.

In this class, where the vehicles are all so close to each other, I think what I’m really searching for are the little variances that fit my needs best. The Q5 has several that jumped out at me.

The blind-spot indicators on my Tahoe are small lights built into the side mirrors. Lots of times I don’t even notice that they are activated. On the Audi, they are large lights on the inside of the mirror frames. It is much more noticeable and, thus, useful.

The entertainment system is way more intuitive than Acura’s. It isn’t as attractive or filled with features as Mercedes’, but it is dead simple to use. In fact, my sales guy challenged me to figure out how to do a few simple tasks while I drove. I was able to do them all immediately. While the Mercedes user interface may be prettier, the Audi gets things done quicker.

Audi has wireless Apple CarPlay and a wireless charging bank. No need to always keep a USB cord jammed into the center console, tangling with other things.

The Q5 allows you to open the back liftgate by swinging your leg beneath a sensor. Neither the Acura nor Mercedes I drove offered that option.

The Q5 has traditional tires rather than run-flats, and is equipped with a spare.

So where did the Q5 slot in after three test drives? Better than the Acura, obviously. In a bit of a surprise, it was right there with the Mercedes. I don’t know why that was unexpected. Perhaps a lifetime of hearing that Mercedes makes some of the nicest cars you can buy, but rarely hearing Audi’s name mentioned? Maybe Audi is a little more niche where Mercedes is more universally aspirational?

If you made a checklist of all the important aspects of the GLC and Q5 and rated them against each other, I think it would be very close to even.

When the comparison is that tight, it can come down to those small details I mentioned. As I went through my notes and watched some video reviews Friday night, it became apparent that Audi checked a few more boxes than Mercedes.

By the end of the evening, there was a new number one car on my list.