New A4

[David Head]

Spent some time in the new A4 yesterday (3.0 6 speed). Nice enough car -
plenty of amenities including lotsa cupholders. Okay on the ooomph
department - excellent handling and grip. Looks good on the front
quarterangles. Hate it from the rear. With the high waist it looks slab
sided, and overall it looks to me like an A6 that got scrunched at each
end. It kinda reminded me of the way the Jetta changed. It looks okay,
but...
Most importantly, at $37-38K well optioned it moves too close to the
price point for an A6 (I can buy a nice A6 2.7 for $42K).

One of our interesting conversations was an integration effort between
APR and Michael Valentine. Apparently there's a serious effort to
integrate the V1 readout into the display of the A4 - which would mean
the A6 and A8 as well. Since they would obviously use the same comm
protocols and language...