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Old 03-24-2015, 08:42 PM   #7
robg
Carmudgeon
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 3,225
Quote:
Originally Posted by AF View Post
The timing of this post is strangely perfect ... the R8 is at the dealer getting some things done to it and they gave me a 2015 Audi 4 allroad ...

After 2 days (and counting) I was wondering if anyone here from the board drove this generation A4 and I sign in and here is Rob posting about it

Is this the slowest car ever ... it is so strange, I floor the car and you can't feel any shifts, I have had enough time with it that the gas ran low so I put premium gas in and it still feels like the slowest car I ever drove and the automatic shifts so insanely smooth that you can't feel it and the car just feels WWWWAAAYYY too smooth. Is it a CVT with some software to make it feel like it shifts but doesn't ... pretty sure the answer is no, isn't that reserved for the FWD audi's

Rob did you feel this to ?

Otherwise the car is amazing ... it just feels good but way too slow ...
The Quattro cars definitley have a ZF 8 speed just like our F10s. Only the FWD cars are CVT. It's funny- I had to double check to make sure the rental car I had was Quattro. At first I was sure it was a FWD with the CVT given how the transmssion felt (just like you). Given that my car is so similar on paper (turbo 4, similar weight, similar power, ZF8 speed), I was really surprised by how much slower it felt. And you are right the shifts are much smoother than on the F10..which I actually liked. I guess Audi's preferred transmission calibration is much less aggressive. You really need to floor it to get it to downshift. My car will drop a few gears if you just breathe on the throttle. Still surprised that the same transmission could feel so different...shows you how important software tuning is these days. We both have the "sport automatic" option on our F10s too. I thought this was pretty much just marketing to get us to pay $500 for some paddles. But maybe they do actually use a different calibration on the tranmssion. Even in regular (comfort) mode my transmission is way more aggressive than in the Audi. It insists on starting out in 1st gear no matter what for example, whereas the Audi was quite content w/ 2nd gear starts. If so, maybe Audi does something similar if you opt for one of their sport packages w/ the paddles.

Maybe its just my car, but the downside for me of the more aggressive tuning is that I feel a jerk sometimes from 1->2 and 2->3. More pronounced in DS mode or when shifting manuallly. Plus I always feel the downshift to 1st when coasting to a stop - makes it hard to stop perfectly smoothly due to that extra bit of engine braking that kicks in at the last second..

There are a few people here that have current gen A4s, but I believe they all have manuals so they would not encounter this.

Otherwise a very nice car.

Last edited by robg; 03-24-2015 at 08:58 PM.
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