2008 Audi A5 3.2; Quattro; Super Nice!! L@@k! on 2040-cars

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Junkyard Gem: Fully depreciated 2001 Audi A8 L 4.2 Quattro

A great big A8 with a long wheelbase and all-wheel-drive is just the thing for a serious player with an oligarch-grade bankroll and the need to get to important corporate meetings during the worst Colorado snowstorms, and we're betting that's how this 15-year-old A8 L's original owner saw it. The problem with cars like this is that big, complicated, expensive machinery tends to develop big, complicated, expensive problems once the aging process sets in, and third or fourth owners of high-end German luxury cars tend to lack the resources needed to keep those cars going. So, those S-Classes and 7-Series and A8s end up in a place like this when something expensive breaks at age 15. This one, which has a very straight body and decent interior, now sits in its final parking space, among the Daewoo Leganzas and Volvo 850s in the imports section of a Denver self-service yard. If you're good with the wrenches and have some Audi expertise, you can't beat the luxury-per-buck deal of a solid 10-to-15-year-old A8; the price for a runner tends to be about the same as that for a tattered Corolla of the same age. This car's base price was $69,946 in 2001, or just over 95 grand in inflation-adjusted 2016 bucks, and it's packed full of leading-edge engineering that's still fairly advanced today. Related Video:

Auto Express gets close-up look at the 2016 Audi R8

Audi invited Auto Express to the Ascari circuit in Spain to get a ride in the new R8 that will be introduced at the Geneva Motor Show. Jack Rix starts by giving us a walkaround of the camouflage-covered coupe, the obvious difference between it and the leaked image from a couple of weeks ago being the slatted front intakes. However, those intakes are present on the image Audi teased showing off one new, slimmer, laser headlight. The biggest shock: there will be no V8 model at launch - there will be one engine in two levels of tune. The first is the 5.2-liter R8 V10 with 540 horsepower, a bump of 15 hp over the present car. The second is the 5.2-liter R8 V10 Plus with 610 hp, a leap of 60 hp over the current model. That hotter trim, identified by its fixed rear wing, drops the 0-60 mile per hour time by a half-second to 3.2 seconds, and increases top speed seven miles per hour to 205 mph. Rix ran his fingers along the intakes behind the door and said he could feel sideblades, so all is not lost - what would an R8 be without sideblades? More obviously, on the V10 Plus Rix looked over there are new trapezoidal exhaust tips framing a serious diffuser in back. Underneath, the aluminum chassis adapted from the Lamborghini Huracan is 15 percent lighter than before and 40 percent stiffer. Shifting will be done via a seven-speed S-tronic dual-clutch transmission only. There are seven driving modes, a switchable exhaust note, and more direct variable steering. The German test driver Rix rode with said the new R8 is easier to drive faster, which - no matter what you think of the looks - will make it pretty special. News Source: Auto Express via YouTubeTip: Clark Geneva Motor Show Audi Coupe Luxury Performance Videos

2017 Audi A4 Allroad: Android Auto is great, just not with MMI

I love Android Auto, but I've given up using it in our long-term 2017 Audi A4 Allroad. In fact, I've given up using it in any car that doesn't have a touchscreen interface. A rotary knob like the one in the Allroad works fine when the system is designed around it, but using it as the input device for Android Auto is frustrating and distracting since it the system was designed for touchscreens. Audi had to adapt it (and Apple CarPlay) for MMI. Plus, the situation is made even worse here since it looks like the A4 Allroad has a touchscreen (the image above is from a Q7). Various fingerprints can attest to that. Unless I'm driving my personal car, I never listen to the radio (my '99 Mercedes may not have Bluetooth or an auxiliary input, but it does have a Motorola car phone). Spotify, Audible, and Pocket Casts are my go-to media services and they all stream straight from my phone. Each one has a Android Auto app. Android Auto's Google Maps and Waze integration is just as useful. All my contacts are in Google Maps, so if I have Android Auto I just use the voice command to find my destination. It's stupid simple. One of the best parts of Android Auto is that it looks and acts the same way in every car. It has the same apps in the same place, all streaming from the phone you use every day. When you're forced to interact with it in a new way, it takes that familiarization away. It's like using a computer with only a keyboard. Sure, it can work, but it's unintuitive and, in this case, dangerously distracting. I really like our Allroad, just not the infotainment system. Related Video: