The Audi A4 is one of the bigger cars in a army of abate sport-luxury sedans that, dollar-for-dollar, offers some of the best, best ambrosial cartage in the world.
To be sure, Audi’s A4/S4 band is added than sedans. For 2007, all-new convertibles augment the absolute four-door models and wagons. Additionally new is the ultra-high achievement (and at $66,000, expensive), 420-hp RS4. From the enthusiast driver’s perspective, it’s one of the best sedans ever.
The A4 band is complex, with 21 variants. The key is cerebration according to priorities: anatomy style, agent size, front- or all-wheel drive, chiral type. All are accurately balanced, agreeable automobiles.
The A4 2.0T, still priced able-bodied below $30,000, is fun to drive. Its turbocharged, 200-hp four-cylinder is one of the bigger baby engines going, with acceptable acknowledgment and active acceleration, decidedly with the accepted six-speed chiral transmission. It corners like a sports sedan, and high-quality architecture is axiomatic central and out. Audi’s alternative quattro all-wheel drive arrangement can advice accumulate the disciplinarian on the alley behindhand of the altitude or situation, and buyers don’t accept to accept a big agent or appropriate archetypal to get it.
Going up the line, there’s a bland V6 and two able V8s. Those who frequently backpack gear, dogs or burden will acknowledge the A4 Avant, which offers the added amplitude of a wagon while advancement the A4’s adventurous alive character. The new convertibles are stylish, adult and analytic practical, and they don’t accept to bulk an arm and a leg. The S4 models will address to enthusiast drivers who crave their brawny adeptness and adventurous handling, for a lot below banknote than the RS4.
Every A4 should address to techies. Advanced engines affection absolute ammunition injection: the cleanest, best able agency yet devised to alloy gasoline and air in an engine’s cylinders. Chiral choices accommodate a six-speed automated with Tiptronic manual-shift affection and an able continuously capricious automated (CVT) that delivers absolutely seamless shifting. Sophisticated abeyance technology is aggrandized with cyberbanking adherence control, which can advice the disciplinarian abstain a crash. The A4 is blimp with assurance appearance and offers rear side-impact airbags, while best cars in its chic don’t.
Unlike added tech-heavy cars, the gizmos alloy accurately in the A4, acceptable comfort, accessibility and safety, and convalescent the alive experience.
The A4 can be cher and it’s about small. On the added hand, you’ll accept to attending continued and adamantine to acquisition a car that blends alive satisfaction, safety, convenience, practicality, abundant accomplishment and reasonable buying bulk as able-bodied as the A4.
Lineup
The 2007 Audi A4 band appearance a all-inclusive arrangement of sedans, wagons and convertibles with four-cylinder, V6 or V8 engines, front- or all-wheel drive and a best of six-speed manual, accepted six-speed automated or continuously capricious (CVT) automated transmissions. The band includes added than 20 abstracted variants, including the S4 models.
The A4 2.0T auto ($28,240) is the atomic big-ticket model, powered by 200-hp, 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine. The 2.0T Avant ($31,340) and added wagons appear alone with quattro, which is included in the price. The accepted upholstery is cloth. Additionally standard: dual-zone automated altitude ascendancy with berth filtration, cruise control, bend and telescoping council wheel, adeptness driver’s seat, auto-on alive lights, a 10-speaker stereo with six-CD banker and 16-inch aluminum wheels.
Option bales for 2.0T: The Exceptional Amalgamation ($1,900) includes a adeptness bottle sunroof and 17-inch wheels. The Accessibility Amalgamation ($1,900) adds driver’s bench position memory, Homelink alien transmitter, rain and ablaze sensors, auto-dimming central mirror with compass, auto-dimming and adeptness folding alfresco mirrors and Bi-Xenon headlights with adaptive avant-garde lighting.
The A4 3.2 auto comes with the CVT automated ($35,540) and FronTrak front-wheel drive; the 3.2 quattro comes with all-wheel-drive and the six-speed chiral ($36,440) or CVT ($37,640). The 3.2 Avant ($37,440) comes with the chiral or the Tiptronic six-speed automated ($38,640). The A4 3.2 models affection a 255-hp V6 and appear accepted with covering upholstery, a sunroof, and 17-inch wheels.
Options for the 3.2 models accommodate a Algid Weather Amalgamation ($1,000) with acrimonious seats and a ski sack, and Audi’s S-line Action Amalgamation ($2,750), which adds 18-inch auto with achievement or all-season tires, action suspension, brushed aluminum trim and S-line administration tweaks.
The S4 auto ($47,500) and S4 Avant ($48,500), which affection a 340-hp 4.2-liter V8 and accepted quattro. The S4s action the DTM Appearance Amalgamation ($1,500), which is called for Germany’s agnate to NASCAR antagonism and includes carbon-fiber spoilers.
The A4 Cabriolet, or convertible, has alone four bench belts, and is accessible in bristles models that about accord to the sedans and wagons: 2.0T CVT ($39,100); 2.0T quattro with accepted automated ($41,200); 3.2 quattro with automated ($46,950); S4 chiral ($55,700); and S4 automated ($56,900).
The are lots of stand-alone options for all A4 and S4 models, including a aeronautics arrangement ($2,100), a Bose stereo advancement ($1,000) with XM accessory radio receiver, Parktronic ambit admonishing ($350), appropriate copse trim bales ($400) and headlight washers ($150).
The RS4 ($66,000) sits aloft the absolute lineup. This is a high-performance auto of the aboriginal order, with a 420-hp 4.2-liter V8, chiral chiral alone and a appropriate quattro arrangement that biases adeptness commitment to the rear wheels. It additionally includes best of the abundance and accessibility appearance offered beyond the line.
Safety appearance that appear accepted accommodate front-seat avant-garde and side-impact airbags, curtains-style head-protection airbags avant-garde and rear, and advanced, full-feature cyberbanking adherence and anti-lock braking systems (ABS). Rear-seat ancillary airbags ($350) and a annoy burden adviser ($250) are optional.
Walkaround
The Audi A4 looks like a premium-grade car. It’s chic and assertive, aloof abbreviate of candidly aggressive, with a tidy, well-planted attitude that oozes presence. That attendance is able abundant to beard the A4’s dimensions.
This is a about baby car: appreciably abate than competitors like the Cadillac CTS or Infiniti G35, and actual abutting in best measures to the bunched Honda Civic.
The eye anon settles on the A4’s big, alpine grille, of which opinions vary. The alone accord seems to be that it’s different, and it anon identifies the A4 as an Audi.
The headlights accord the front-end an absolute look, with lenses that bend advancement as they blanket about the fenders. Laterally breach intakes below the body-colored bonanza and outboard of the grille do bifold duty, apartment fog lamps and channeling air adjoin the avant-garde disc brakes. A bashful awning swell, which designers alarm a adeptness bulge, carries the grille’s vertical outlines aback to the roof pillars. On the ultra-high achievement RS4, the awning and fenders are bogus from aluminum to abate weight.
The A4’s contour shows a acutely channelled accept band alive the breadth of the car, from the abaft bend of the headlights to the arch bend of the appendage lights. The ancillary windows are accurately ample to the anatomy mass, aloft a about aerial beltline. A bang band break up the amplitude of the lower aperture panels. The corrective aperture handles attending great, but they are adamantine to grab and can breeze abroad from your fingers aback you’re in a hurry.
The A4 Cabriolets attending acceptable with the convertible top up and abundant bigger with it down, which is apparently the way it should be. The absolutely automatic, electro-hydraulic roof will accessible or abutting at speeds up to 19 mph. That’s accessible if a rain squall sneaks up while profiling through town. The bendable top is thickly insulated, with a bottle rear window and defroster, so it shouldn’t be too big a damage in algid climates.
Interior
The convertible additionally gives up some block amplitude to accomplish allowance for the top mechanism, abbreviation best accommodation to 10.2 cubic feet. There’s still affluence of allowance for luggage.
The accepted bendable top is able-bodied cloistral adjoin algid air, and to a basal extent, noise. Audi additionally offers an acoustic roof, which uses added big-ticket fabrics with a greater actual density. The aggregation claims this top reduces autogenous babble levels to those in the A4 sedan, alike at artery speeds.
The A4 Cabriolet gives up a seat-belt (and accordingly a seat) in back, but if you were the being relegated to middle-rear in the sedan, you adeptness not accede that any abundant loss. The premium-grade attending alfresco the Audi A4 carries through inside, acknowledgment to clean, affected design, about rich-looking abstracts and acceptable accomplishment work. Colors combinations tend to be muted, and a best of copse trims or aluminum inserts accompaniment the leather, bolt and plastics.
The accepted A4 seats are able-bodied bolstered, with affluence of lumbar support. We begin them comfortable. The sports seats in S and RS models accept big ancillary bolsters that are harder to accelerate over, but the aftereffect is Velcro-like anchor on a driver’s abaft and torso. The accepted bolt upholstery feels abiding and provides a bit of anchor itself. The alternative covering surfaces are alluringly stitched and fit our posteriors well. The seats, mirrors, council cavalcade and added appearance acclimatize in every believable direction, allowance drivers acquisition a able basement position.
Interior space, however, is not one of the A4’s strengths, alike compared to some sedans with agnate exoteric dimensions. To be sure, there is added than able amplitude for average-sized adults to adjust, move and amplitude in front, afterwards affliction of claustrophobia. But the A4 may not be a car for the absolutely full-figured, or bodies who acceleration taller than six feet, two inches. On a approved basis, the abate amplitude in the aback bench is best aloof for accouchement and pre-teens.
All of the A4’s controls are focused on the driver; with few exceptions, they’re ergonomically configured and allegedly located. The council caster hub repeats the grille’s trapezoidal outline. A minimalist set of accessory controls on the caster spokes manages audio and added functions. Column-mounted stalks accomplish the accepted arrangement of appearance and are acutely marked, except for the rear wiper/washer about-face on the Avant, which is controlled by the right-hand lever. We like Audi’s lane-change arresting feature, which delivers three turn-signal blinks with a tap on the lever. It works abundant bigger than some added manufacturers’ efforts to re-invent the about-face signal, best decidedly BMW’s.
The A4’s gauges are black by a hooded animate and calmly beheld through the top bisected of the council wheel, behindhand of how the caster is adjusted. The TFT advice display, advertisement such abstracts as radio frequency, cruise breadth and account breach warning, separates the tachometer and speedometer, with ammunition and coolant gauges tucked bottomward in the corners.
Knobs and buttons for the audio and altitude controls are amassed in the centermost stack, all calmly deciphered and aural accessible reach. The altitude arrangement is accessible to operate, but the air conditioning struggled to accumulate up on a 95-degree day alive through the desert. It was about again that we noticed that, at assertive angles, the sun reflected up off of the argent trim surrounding the shifter on an A4 2.0T sedan.
When the aeronautics arrangement is ordered, the stereo animate gives way to the map display, which again doubles as stereo controls. The affectation is one of the best available, and arrangement controls are readily understood. It’s accessible to acclimatize the cursor and about-face the map scale, while on-screen telltales abduct actual little absolute acreage from the map. The map offers both a flat, two-dimensional and a bird’s-eye perspective, the closing with a abroad border arresting beyond top of the screen.
The exceptional stereo has MP3 adequacy and a brace of slots for Secure Digital anamnesis cards. Unfortunately, alone aggregate and pre-set radio stations can be afflicted afterwards aboriginal acute Accept on the aperture agenda every time the car is started. We acquisition it annoying to assurance the cyberbanking agnate of a accountability abandonment aloof to about-face on the radio. Also, the stereo is on all the time the abyssal arrangement is active, and it’s annoying. You don’t about-face it off, you aloof about-face it down.
There are added accessory annoyances with the A4. We ambition the beep acknowledging the alien lock would complete added promptly, as we consistently begin ourselves pausing for a moment to be abiding the doors had in actuality locked. And while we’re able believers in bench belts, we begin the admonishing bell annoying because it would actively complete anon afterwards starting the car, afore we started driving. In added words, you’re not accustomed to aloof sit there with the agent alive afterwards accedence up.
As for abnormal absolute impressions, we like the jumpsuit wiper blades for their glassy looks, slicker aerodynamics and solid basement adjoin the bottle at autobahn speeds. And we were beholden for the red Stop button on the driver’s anamnesis settings animate whenever we apprenticed the amiss anamnesis ambience button.
There’s a lot added advantageous accumulator spots in the A4 than there were in Audis or contempo past. It starts with an impressively big cuff box, admitting the box gives up amplitude to the CD banker if the aeronautics arrangement is ordered. There’s a accurate drawer the admeasurement of a acclaim agenda aloft the in-dash CD changer. The avant-garde doors accept anchored map pockets, and the avant-garde seatbacks accept net pouches to authority magazines, candy and added sundries. A adeptness point in the centermost animate bin augments the cigar lighter in the avant-garde ashtray. A flip-down armrest in the rear bench contains two cup holders.
The A4’s fold-down, height-adjustable avant-garde centermost armrest can acclimatize with the disciplinarian aperture armrest, auspicious a restful, cocked disciplinarian posture, but it additionally can baffle with operating the handbrake. Pulling the anchor batten requires contorting the wrist or adopting the armrest. Some of us admired the centermost armrest; others begin it a affliction and anon aloft it aloft accepting in the car.
With 13.4 cubic anxiety of block space, the A4 auto avalanche hardly aloft the beggarly in this class. Moreover, the amplitude in the block is fabricated as advantageous as possible. The block lid flips out of the way for accessible access. There are cubbies in the block ancillary panels that booty advantage of amplitude about the caster wells, and several tie-down points.
The Avant appearance a two-way burden awning that includes a pull-up, vertical net to arrest ample objects, or maybe a dog, abaft the rear seat. It could be important in an accident. Pull-down grips central the liftgate additional your easily from any alley crud accumulated on the outside.
Driving Impression
The Audi A4 offers acceptable administration and response, authoritative it a lot of fun on ambagious roads. It’s acutely abiding at aerial speeds, as one adeptness apprehend from a bigger, added car. Its engines ambit from active and economical to Holy Cow! with gas auto tax.
The A4 is Audi’s counterpoint to the BMW 3 Series, and we’d adventure that anniversary is the other’s best obvious, absolute adversary in the bazaar place. The A4 is acutely aggressive with the 3 in the quantifiable, cold measures. Abundant of the abstract and belly is present and accountable, too. Alike area it follows a altered track, it doesn’t devious too far. But in one measure, it’s far ahead. Audi’s quattro all-wheel drive arrangement is about legendary, and abundant bigger sorted than the all-wheel-drive systems offered in the BMW 3 Series and Mercedes-Benz C-Class. Meanwhile, the Acura TL and abounding added cars that attempt in the sporty, near-luxury chic alone appear with front-wheel drive.
The A4 lacks the quiet, about Zen-like confinement afforded by some of its competitors, but those who acknowledge its active ancestry will acquisition it added than quiet and bland enough. Wind and alley babble are accurately filtered in the sedan, below so in the Avant, area the ample burden amplitude amplifies the hisses and rumbles. The aforementioned ample aggregate of air works able-bodied with the stereo, however, giving the bass tones a nice, abysmal resonance in the Avant.
The 2.0T suffers from turbo lag, a affection that’s amplified aback commutual with the Tiptronic automated that comes with quattro. The Multitronic CVT (continuously capricious transmission) with the four-cylinder and front-wheel drive is a competent package, but it’s a aggregate that doesn’t bear what we attending for in an A4. The A4 2.0T’s four-cylinder agent works best with the six-speed chiral gearbox and that’s the aggregate we’d adjustment here, admitting we ambition the about-face throws on the chiral were a little shorter.
With the 2.0T turbocharged engine, there’s not a lot of adeptness bottomward at the actual basal of the rev range. The chiral allows the abettor to accumulate the agent alive area the torque comes in greater quantity. Yet alike with the manual, the turbo is not abundant for squirting at a moment’s notice, so casual a alternation of cars on a two-lane alley can be a challenge. It’s absurd for ambagious roads, however, and we had a bang with it on a ambagious acropolis ascend out of California’s Carmel Valley.
The 2.0T does actual able-bodied on the highway, activity able canoeing at aerial speeds all day. We did this and got 27 mpg. An A4 2.0T Quattro is EPA City/Highway-rated to get 22/31 mpg.
The 3.2-liter V6 is a abundant bigger best aback acclimation an automated transmission. The V6 is smoother and added aesthetic than the 2.0T. With the V6, the six-speed Tiptronic automated is about as acknowledging as the six-speed manual, and by far added all-around in circadian traffic. We adopt to put it in Drive and go, and we doubtable best bodies will rarely, if anytime use the Tiptronic chiral about-face feature.
Those who do will acquisition the Tiptronic avalanche a bit abbreviate in the manumatic game, mostly because it will not acquiesce abounding chiral ascendancy of the shifts. An algorithm in the powertrain administration computer accouterment up a accessory to put the agent at the optimum point in the torque curve, and a button below the gas pedal accouterment bottomward a accessory aback mashed, as aback casual or accelerating up a grade. This is an absorbing appliance of computerization, but it mocks the Tiptronic’s affiance of a manual-override automatic. In practice, the downshift is occasionally helpful, but the upshift is annoying aback it occurs in the average of a corner.
All the A4 models action brittle council acknowledgment with abating directional stability. All feel buried and assured at aerial speed. There’s below pogo over bouncing pavement on fast and attenuated ambagious anchorage than in added cars. Quick left-right-left transitions are handled with finesse. The aforementioned goes for the Avant wagon. The V6 models, which are 150 pounds heavier, feel below active and slower in acknowledgment to disciplinarian inputs than the 2.0T models. Ride and administration with the abject abeyance is firm, but not stiff. The alternative action abeyance tends added adjoin stiff, about harsh. We adopt it, but anticipate best buyers will be happier with the accepted suspension.
The brakes action absorbing endlessly adeptness with no fade. Bland stops can be a challenge, however, about as if all the cyberbanking systems are ambagious anniversary other. The anchor pads assume to abide acute adjoin the discs alike as the burden on the pedal is eased. This undercuts the A4’s adeptness as a disciplinarian car in alternate traffic.
The S4 delivers brawny achievement from its adapted V8. It works able-bodied with the manual, which is decidedly accessible to shift, because the bulk of adeptness it has to control. The clamp pedal is not ever abundant and the shifter is so accessible the clamp hardly seems all-important at times. We collection an S4 Cabriolet and an S4 Avant and begin both of them to be adorable cars. It’s adamantine to brainstorm anyone defective added power. The agent is bland and acquiescent at low rpm, admitting the disciplinarian consistently has a faculty of absurd adeptness beneath foot. The ride affection is close but tolerable.
The RS4 auto cranks aggregate up a few notches, alike compared to the V8-powered, sport-tuned S4 models. And at its price, it should. Beyond a 25 percent application addition and weight-reduction measures, its quattro all-wheel drive arrangement is acquainted for the track. The absence akin of adeptness commitment is biased added adjoin the rear wheels, so the RS4 behaves added like a rear-drive car.
As such, it’s one of the best balanced, best drivable achievement cars we’ve sampled, acceptation it’s not ever absorbed to understeer (trying to advance beeline in avant-garde as the disciplinarian turns) or oversteer (getting apart in back). It additionally lets the disciplinarian acclimatize its aisle by application the gas pedal as able-bodied as the steering.
Even in the RS4, there’s some akin of understeer, which is the absence appropriate engineers adopt for real-world safety. Yet in rapid, hard, larboard or appropriate administration changes, the RS4 is amazingly controllable and requires actual baby council ascribe to turn. A disciplinarian can absolutely get the rear-end to accelerate out with the gas pedal, axis the car added quickly, and again constrict it appropriate aback in aback the burke is lightened.
The 420-hp V8 is sweet, breeding an absorbing 100 application per liter of displacement afterwards a turbocharger. There’s a abiding breeze of torque at any acceleration in any gear, and a visceral, amazing high-rpm blitz that will admonish every car enthusiast what he or she loves about driving. In short, from the enthusiast driver’s perspective, the RS4 is one of the best absorbing and animating sedans we’ve apprenticed in years.
Summary
The Audi A4 is fun and active in any of its 21 variations. It delivers affluence of power, admirable gas breadth for its class, advanced complete and, aloft all, an affiliation of assorted systems that accord it abyss and a aerial akin of alive satisfaction. Autogenous amplitude is tighter than in abounding competitors, but Audi’s quattro all-wheel drive arrangement charcoal the benchmark. Prices ambit from the very-high $20,000 ambit to aloof accomplished $70,000, aback loaded with options. If you plan to attending at entry-luxury sports sedans, we acclaim that the A4 be one of them.
