OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
I had one of these for a bit this afternoon. My boss's wife picked it up about a month ago to replace her 2011 Chrysler Town and Country, which had experienced three transmission failures and was then, at that point, beginning to experience "electrical hauntings" where the horn would honk faintly and the wipers would twitch on the windshield.... seemingly at random!!
I was at their house today and she tossed me the keys and said to take it for a bit to see what I thought. So of course I did
Vehicle was very nice. They have the 333HP version, and it has plenty of get-up and go. Acceleration was brisk, the shifts were firm, though the shift out of first gear is almost instant; first is VERY short, and I found this a bit of a weird experience.
It has the paddle shifters on the wheel for manual mode, and it works as one would expect.
I was not a fan of the stereo controls on the wheel. It is somewhat time consuming to get to where you want to be using the scroll wheel/click combo and I could see this causing driver distraction trying to find a song or station.
The seats and wheel were very nice. Though I will say that IMHO BMW uses nicer materials in these departments.
In that vein, they had cross-shopped it with a BMW but found it too "techie", and so went with the Audi.
The gauges are bright and easy to read. But not distracting. The fit and finish inside was excellent, and there were no squeaks or rattles.
The handling was good as well and even with the wide tires, it did not seem to follow ruts in the road.
All-in-all it was a pleasure to drive