performance goodies for the '09 A3?

[thejimrose]

Wow you can cut the biting negativity in here with a knife...

Yes i've heard of snow. Grew up in Boston, lived in Northampton for 10 years
and averaged about 60 days of snowboarding/year in NH, VT and Maine. All of
that was in various FWD vw's with good snow tires. So my opinion still
stands - if you wand an a3 and live in the snow belt, get a good set of snow
tires and you'll be fine. Or a beater suv.. the fwd a3 is by far the
performer of the 2.

Of course I'd also go sunroof delete - and save the 200 or so pounds that
the 'open sky' thing costs you.

LSD's are 1200 and 1600 for manual / dsg, plus intall and setup. Pretty
cheap considering it makes a 1wd car 2wd with no weight penalty. Save your
haldex $ and apply it to something usefull...

We are working on our dealer network, it takes time to build a national
network of competent installers and salespeople. And since i am the entire
sales staff, well let's just say my days are full. We have all of our
product on our website, as we can't control the websites of our dealers. But
thanks for the feedback.

We see manual b7 a4's and s4's through here all the time. Wagons too.
Someone found them.

The 09 a4 has a completely different engine than the 09 a3 with a larger
turbo and a host of other changes. It's much stronger and a stock 09 a4
pulls harder than a chipped b7 a4. On our dyno it made 261hp / 305tq [crank
with 15% loss]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/34198144@N08/3439211948/

It's brilliant to drive. The suspension layout and geometry is far more
advanced than the b7. Despite it's weight and size, it's remarkably fluid
around a racetrack. My favorite bit is teh electric power steering rack, on
the BOTTOM of the car. Having just replaced [been violated by] mine in my
b5a4 i wanted to lick it when i saw it.

But yea, for my $ it'd be fwd a3 or b7 a4.

On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 1:04 PM, Brett Dikeman <brett.dikeman at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 3:25 PM, thejimrose <thejimrose at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The awd in the mk5 is a waste of time as
> > the car is 99.9% of the time a fwd car.
>
> Around here we get something called "snow".  You may have heard of it?
>  It's similar to "rain", only more slippery.
>
> You want me to spend how much on an LSD, plus labor?  I'm guessing at
> least $1k for the part- I can't find prices and your site was too busy
> trying to sell me a Signature Somethingorother.  Did I mention that
> your nearest authorized installer is more than an hour's drive from
> Boston and doesn't have any products/prices on their website?
>
> As for B7 A4's, tempting, but they're hard to find with a manual;
> manual S4 avants are rare as hen's teeth, A4s and A4 avants similarly
> so.  I dig the post-2005.5 look, but...
>
> As for the B8- I agree that it is better equipped in the gizmo
> department; the A3 lags behind the rest of the range, certainly.  It
> should, given that they're $3k apart.  Looks are pretty meh (the B8 A4
> wagon is UGLY.  AS.  SIN), 6-speeds are reportedly a special/rare
> production run.  Moving that amount of car seems like a tall order for
> the 2.0TQ, though I was surprised to read there is less than 200lb
> difference between the A3 and A4 2.0TQ's.
>
> Brett
>