any Audi A3 owners on here?

Hi anyone on this forum owned an Audi A3 petrol or a desiel?


since having ANOTHER bike accident and breaking me collar bone, and trashing another bike think its time to update my car.

I want to get a small 5 door car with tow bar and Audi A3 pretty much my choice of car. anyone got bad/good reviews on them? I am looking at either a 1.6 petrol or the 2.0 desiel 5 door.

insurance for my fiat punto is £416 comp and for the Audi its £600 comp and i rather drive the audi

Had an 86 cs5000 quattro turbo. Put 252,000 miles on it before i sold it. Loved/ hated. It did EVERYTHING right except let you keep your wallet closed. When i sold it the only thing that did not work was the heater in the driver seat. Sold 10 yrs ago for $4000.00 orignial clutch and turbo, absolutely no engine, clutch, trans, or driveline problems just nickeled and dimed its way to $11,000 in reciepts on little things. Audi / porsche are VERY proud of their parts.... Would i buy another audi ? Yea i think im in better financial shape to own one now. By the way no other mechanic touched this car but me from 80,000 miles till i sold at 252,000.
Currently own 3 ford explorers 1 ive had for 12 yrs put 178,000 miles on with NO expense except spk plugs, shocks, ball joints thats all. Kinda skews my view on german engineering.

[Wideboy]

Its just a re-badged golf.

[punyXpress]

Originally Posted by Wideboy

Its just a re-badged golf/Skoda/Seat?.

Welcome to the real world.

[Luckypants]

I guess the question is which model year are you looking at? The brand spankers are quite different to 5 year old cars.

[L3nny]

Get the 3.2 V6 I have the same engine in my TT and it's a beauty. In A3 mode they are a real bargain.

Expect under 25 Mpg though, but the smiles make up for it

[Nobbylad]

I had a 59 plate 1.6 diesel....worst car I've ever had. Under-powered and low specc'd.

Luckily, I only had to stick with it for 3 years (company lease car).

I drove newer versions with bigger engines when mine was being serviced, they were better, but I still didn't get on with them. Space is limited too.

[Haircut]

It could depend on the age gar you are looking at the new A3 Sport back (2013-) onwards is much better for space then the old as it has an extended floorpan, the 2.0 Diesel is nice to drive plenty of poke and you can get very good mpg as well.

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by Nobbylad

<snip> low specc'd. <snip>

This is what I've found recently. I'm looking at a company lease car and was surprised how low the lease payments were on an A3 sportback, they were similar to a Golf estate. Then I looked at what you get for your money and you need to really raid the options list to get the same spec as a Golf and that puts the price up A LOT. The A3 has the same chassis/engine/transmission as the current Golf/Octavia/Leon so if you like the way it drives look at those for better VFM in my opinion. The Golf is very well spec'd and has a nice interior. I'm now tending towards the new SEAT Leon because of bang for buck factor of toys given that the mechanicals are the same as a Golf / A3.

[Red Herring]

What Luckypants said. We went for the Fabia diesel as we didn't need a big car. If you do look at diesels try and get the older 1.9td rather than the new 1.6 version. We bought a 10 plate 1.6 but had no end of issues with the DPF and the way it made it drive, in the end we swopped it for an 09 plate 1.9 and it is miles better (both metaphorically and literally, like we get 60+ mpg now against under 50 from the 1.6)