I guess the grass always seems greener on the other side, doesn't it........my experience of Audi over nearly seven years of ownership of my S8 (I do love the car, even if the alternator stopped charging and dumped me on the side of the road for hours the other day!!) is that main dealerships are extremely snooty, very overpriced and miss basic things.....certainly, the ones I have used are - Derby Audi ,Leicester Audi and Coopers of Norwich. Within 200 miles of a full main dealer service in Norwich, the brake pad warning light came on....I would have expected them to have picked up on that and recommended to change the pads. Other than a faulty lambda sensor, though, the S8 has had nothing else mechanically wrong until the alternator / voltage regulator failure a few days ago and three door sensors thinking the doors are open for some reason (frozen or wet?)
In stark contrast to my beloved X5....which certainly needs every bit of its warranty and emergency assistance !!! I've only had the 4.8 since August and its already had over £2K of warranty work
Bluetooth module, parking sensors, oil cooler, replacement of corroded fuel filler pipe and wiper arm ( covered by supplying dealer), replacement of Le Mans rear wheel flare (again, covered by Hexagon)and replacement of faulty key (also supplying dealer). BMW dealerships....well, the coffee and wifi area is nice, Soper in Lincoln were a bit dozy about the loan car so I ended up with the service managers M3
but parking sensor repair not quite right
so another main dealer visit sometime. Stratstone Derby seemed really efficient with the latest problem and were pleasant to deal with- the oil cooler job was rapidly done - the Mondial guy told me the dealership would otherwise have had to pay for the Avis Hire Car after 48 hours from recovery and that would have been until after New Year
so the repair was high on their priority list
I think main dealers can all be a bunch of sharks - Leicester Mercedes has to be one of the worst I've ever come across - and I'm not sure if I trust much of what any of them have to say. My Audi though, has been the most reliable car I've ever had, second are the Mercs - an SLK, an A class and a lovely old 450SLC many years ago. The Audi's handling in snow and ice has also been brilliant over the years, despite not being on winter tyres and only having a 5 inch ground clearance, the wheels are 18" though, which helps,245/45R18, rather than the 20s and 22s people changed onto the cars. But I still love the X, in 4.8 guise its a very very special car.
