Amy’s Garage

If someone offered to give you a diesel powered automobile what would be the first thing that pops into your head. How about something like: diesel is used in big trucks, is smelly, dirty and it makes the vehicle hard to start on a cold winter’s day. This may have been the diesel of yesterday, but it is far from the truth of Audi turbo diesel engines today.

Through my affiliation with www.AskPatty.com, I had the opportunity to drive an Audi Turbo Diesel Quattro powered sedan from Denver to Los Vegas with the “Audi Mileage Marathon” October 2008. Audi had over 100 journalists drive 23 Audi diesel vehicles 4,800 miles from New York City to Los Angeles.

Audi brought four TDI {Turbo Direct Injection) Quattro (All Wheel Drive) Clean Diesel models over from Germany

• 7 ea – Q7 3.0 SUVs (Sport utility vehicles)
• 7ea – Q5 3.0 Crossovers
• 7ea – A4 3.0 Sedans
• 2ea – A3 2.0 Sportbacks.

The theme of the marathon was a friendly competition of who could get the best fuel economy in their class.

Granted that the majority of journalists were men, most of the drivers were very serious about the competition. Some tucked in their mirrors, taped off any corners to get the best aerodynamics, and were doing silly things like driving through the desert with the A/C off, hyper-miling behind trucks, and putting the vehicle into neutral going down hills.

My driving partner Kami Buchholz who writes for Automotive Engineering, our passenger Bob Massa of Michelin tires and I decided almost from the get-go that we were going to give our A4 sedan the test of ‘real road driving’ by doing nothing special at all. We would pretend we were on vacation and enjoy the sites and each others company instead of being all obsessive about the mileage.  I guess we did a great job with pretending because we were the last vehicle to pull into the various hotels three nights in a row. They had programmed our route into the navigation system so we had to keep turning off “Matilda” so we could check out side roads and make a lot of extra stops to pick up postcards for Kami’s collection. We were having so much fun I don’t think we even used the cruise control.

Much to the surprise of everyone – including ourselves, “The Vacation Team” came in 1^st place for the best mileage IN our class from Denver to Vegas. We averaged 36.7 mpg with an average speed of 49.3 mph. Does this mean we putted down the roads? No Way! We totally utilized the turbo-powered engine. Don’t tell Audi, but the vehicle beeped at us numerous times to slow down while passing huge motor coaches on those long stretches of one lane highways through Colorado and Arizona.

What do we attribute to our winning the best fuel mileage out of 6 Audi A4’s even though we had the extra weight of a passenger and did nothing special to get better fuel mileage? We laughed a lot! We laughed so much that the car must have been floating on air part of the drive. Seriously, the Audi Engineers had already done the work ahead of time.

What did I like best about driving this luxury diesel powered sedan? That a vehicle could have superior handling and peppiness, great fuel efficiency and ultra low emissions all at the same time was a beautiful thing. I also love, love, love the fact that these cars will one day be able to run on synthetic fuels made out of biomass, such as plant waste.

As an added bonus, the seats were super comfortable. We put in about 9 hours per day on the road for three days. That’s a lot of sitting and poor Bob never got out of the back seat. He graciously offered to help drive, but Kami and I would not give up the power of the wheel.

The coolest feature was the automatic headlights that would tract the road left and right and put on the bright lights and then dim them automatically as needed. We discovered this driving down the mountain into Sedona Arizona through hair pin turns. Kami only had to focus on the road, and the car took care of the lights. I also appreciated that they gave us a tire that could handle the vehicle and the terrain. The Michelin Primacy HP – XL rated tires hugged the road cruising down the highways and going up and down the many curves and switchbacks through the mountains.

The only drawback I found in the car was the control panel that we called the ‘Vista’ of Audi. I had to pull the book every time we wanted to change any of the controls. To do anything you have to look to the digital readout on the navigation screen. I’m talking about turning on the fan, changing the temperature, changing the radio station. And while you are doing anything you loose your navigation. Then you have to hit a bunch of buttons in the right sequence to get “Matilda” back where she belongs. Very frustrating!

Diesels have been a huge hit in Europe for years. They account for more than half of all new vehicles sold in Western Europe. With Audi’s new TDI technology these diesel engines now pass even California’s strict emission standards and can be sold in the US. The dawn of clean diesels is here to stay. So if someone offered to give me a new Audi Diesel powered A4 Sedan…. I would take it with a smile!

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