I purchased a 2001 Audi A6 2.8 on September 1, 2000. Nearly 12 months later, I still love this car. The car developed a very slight transmission leak a few weeks after I took delivery - not very impressive for a car that has what is supposed to be a permanently sealed transmission (there's no typical transmission fluid dipstick or filler tube). But, the dealer fixed this problem very quickly by replacing a transmission seal and the car has been fine ever since (except for the fender ding that occurred while the car was on the dealer's property - they offered to fix it via paintless dent repair but it was in a hard-to-reach spot so I just decided to live with it).

So, why am I recommending this car despite my bumpy first few weeks of ownership? I can explain in four words: "New England Winter" and "quattro". This car is a $40,000 snowplow. It will drive through any amount of snow up to the axles. There's just not enough that can be said about the quattro all-wheel drive system. And it's not just for snow, it improves stability in all weather conditions. With front- or rear-wheel drive cars (I've driven both for extended periods of time), you can always tell which wheels are working harder than the others to get you through that curve, i.e. you can feel the understeer or oversteer and tell which wheels are driving the car. With quattro, the car just feels like it's on rails. You don't feel one set of wheels working harder than the other; instead the car goes confidently where you steer it. It almost feels as if the car has four-wheel steering (it doesn't).

But quattro is only part of the story. A few other car companies, like Subaru, are known for good all-wheel drive systems. And Mercedes, Volvo and BMW all have all-wheel drive systems for passenger cars. But the Audi has lots of other features to recommend itself over offerings from those other companies (in fact, for my money, the A6's only real competition is from its sister car, the Volkswagen Passat VR6 4Motion).

Next most important to me, after the quattro system, is the car's style. The A6 is simply an elegant-looking car. I suppose it may be a love-it-or-hate-it shape, but I love it. There are lots of little touches that really add to the car's style - There are no annoying wiper fluid nozzles cluttering up the hood, they are tucked away out of sight. There are no highly-breakable headlight washers a la Volvo - instead the Audi gets retractable high-pressure washer jets. The rain gutters don't contain any trim or molding, and the front and rear windshields also fit very flush. All in all, this car is very easy to wax, with very little non-body-color trim.

Now to the engine and transmission. I got the A6 2.8 with a 200hp V6 instead of the 2.7T with a 250hp, twin-turbo V6, for one very personal reason: I hated the available wheel options for the 2.7T (yes, wheels are that important to me). I didn't feel that either the standard or optional alloy wheels for the 2.7T did justice to the car's otherwise futuristic appearance. The standard 6-spokes are a little too busy, and the optional alloy wheels look very similar to rims available on previous years' Honda Accords. Sure, I could have paid a few grand more and purchased a set of Audi accessory wheels, but I just couldn't see coughing up that extra money to make up for something I feel Audi should have made available as an option in the first place. Actually, I didn't even like the 2.8's wheels much at first, but they kind of grew on me, and at least they are distinctively Audi, unlike the other generic wheel offerings (the 4.2 has some awesome-looking wheel options, but that's a whole different animal and $10K more)

In retrospect, I do feel that the 2.8's 200hp V6 is somewhat underpowered. It's not as if the car is a slug, but when you pay this much money for a car you expect an engine that is stronger than what you can get in, say, a Ford Taurus. I would say the 2.8 is underpowered enough that it is best to stay in Tiptronic mode when performing highway merging and passing maneuvers. I spend most of the rest of the time in "regular" automatic transmission mode - it's just easier letting the computer figure out when to shift. Since the engine revs willingly, I suppose I could always just drive the car a little harder to get better performance.

This car has a lot of interior room, in both the front and the back. The trunk is huge. What's even better, the back doors open very wide so that items too big for the trunk can often be squeezed into the back seat without much trouble.

The leather seats are coordinated with the wood and metal trim in what Audi calls "Atmospheres" (coordinated interior material color/texture combinations). I'm not sure why Audi makes such a big deal over the "Atmospheres", it's not like you really have total control over the mixing and matching of your interior components. Because I wanted black leather with a Silver exterior, I only had one choice of Atmosphere anyway: it was called Ambition. It's nice enough, even though I wonder if the seats would be more comfortable if they had a different stitching pattern available with one of the other Atmospheres.

I only have a few complaints about this car, and they are for things that aren't quite as important to me as the style and the quattro system. For one thing, the seats are not very supportive. They're also not especially comfortable, though I suppose I fared as well in them during multi-hour drives as I have in any other car. Oddly enough, the lumbar support feels like it's digging into my back even on its minimum setting. Also, the steering wheel adjustment does not go quite as high as I would like - I am constantly brushing my leg against the wheel as I get in, and sometimes even hitting my leg with my hands when making hard turns while driving. At least this keeps the airbag a little lower, so maybe it won't break my nose if it goes off. I'm 6'1" tall, and I have found it difficult to find a driving position that feels really comfortable, though I have gotten used to it over the past several months. I think this is due mostly to the lack of support in the seats and the low height of the steering wheel.

My other big complaint is with the radio. The reception from the antenna built into the rear window is very poor, and there is no automatic scan feature that finds all of the available stations in the area and assigns them to the preset buttons. An auto-scan feature is a must on any modern car radio. I appreciate the fact that there is no bulky antenna sticking off the roof of the car (another styling plus), but that is no excuse for poor reception - I have another car with antenna-in-window that gets much better reception.

As for the rest of the interior, the fiberoptically-lit instruments, gauges and dashboard switches are extremely readable at night. This is a very nice interior. The cupholders are nicely placed, there are vents, cigarette lighters and seat heaters for all passengers, front and back. As if that weren't enough, there is also "Auto-Down" and "Auto-Up" for all four power windows... nice!

The car feels safe and solid, with lots of airbags (though mine wasn't ordered with the side airbags for the rear passengers - the dealer says that most families with children who ride in the back are afraid of those side airbags going off accidentally while Jr. is sleeping on the door - personally I would have preferred all the airbags I could get but I didn't have the patience to wait for a special order). Although it is aerodynamic and rounded in the front, the hood is still high enough that you just might not slide under the front or rear of that Navigator that crosses your path. I noticed one odd thing - the front shoulder belts have a 180 degree twist in them from the place where they come out of the B-pillar to the anchor bolts on the floor. I have seen this in many other A6's, yet the Volkswagen Passat, which uses very similar seatbelt attachments, does not have this twist. I asked the dealer about this but he just shrugged his shoulders. I have often wondered whether this was a long-running factory mistake or done for some specific reason.

There are lots of other little things right with this car. It's actually very easy to change the oil, once you get the lower plastic panel off (the plastic panel isn't difficult to remove but it is a tedious job). On the road, the car is very quiet with very little wind, road or engine noise and the ride is very smooth (I found the car to vibrate slightly more at idle than I would have expected but this gets better as the car warms up and it's not really so bad).

This is as close to a perfect car as I have ever driven. It's definitely not perfect, but no other car I've driven has impressed me as much after years of ownership as this car did after one Winter. The areas where it excels (style, roominess, all-weather traction) simply overwhelm the areas where it falls short.
Amount Paid (US$): 39,412
Condition: New
Model Year: 2001
Model and Options: A6 2.8 Quattro w/ Bose stereo