2008 Audi A4 Quattro Sedan 6 Speed Only 62k Miles Hot Seats Nice! on 2040-cars

Auto blog

2016 Audi A6 First Drive [w/video]

The Audi A6 could be seen as a singular kind of sleeper. It sells in volumes that are one-half to one-third those of its German competition. The sedan doesn't command a conversation much less the imagination, its history bereft of iconic brand identifiers. Think of the way the E28 BMW 5 Series turned the segment into something to be proud of, or those double headlamps from the W210 Mercedes-Benz E-Class, or that other E from 1986 simply known as Der Hammer. There is currently no RS6 sedan in the US to draw halo attention to the clan. And it was the first in its segment to slip into a design lassitude such that you had to check the badge to make sure it wasn't a different Audi. However, I look at the A6 from the other side: it's an underappreciated gem. With the 3.0-liter supercharged V6, it's a thoroughly fun steer. It has more power and torque than the competition. I think it has the finest interior. It's probably my favorite sedan in the segment considering how many boxes it checks before you cross the bridge to things that begin with S, M, and AMG. But you have to get to know an Audi in order to comprehend what it possesses, and the "product improvement" rolled out for the 2016 A6 won't change that. I'll call these "blind spot updates," because someone needs to point out where they are, and even then you've got to work to see them. Nevertheless, they're there, in places like the wider grille, new headlights and taillights with revised LED DRL signatures, new bumpers, side sills, rockers, and trapezoidal tailpipe finishers. The interior and driver assistance systems get gussied-up. The interior and driver assistance systems get gussied-up, too. The base A6 2.0T can be had with driver aids now – Audi pre-sense comes standard, the night vision assistant will identify animals, and the blind spot monitor works with lane keep assist to give you even more warning before changing lanes. There are two new colors and new inlays, like the layered walnut on the tester I drove, which is an upper-tier luxury feature that's finally filtered downstream. The biggest interior rework comes via the MMI system, which gets the Nvidia Tegra 3 quadcore chip pushing graphics to a retractable, eight-inch touchscreen. The additional processing power allows for new features like expanded codec playback – you can now play uncompressed .flac files straight through the stereo.

Audi RS7 prototype is world's sportiest self-driving car [w/video]

Audi may not be the only automaker out there toying with self-driving automobile technology, but it is arguably the fastest of them. A few years back, it raced unleashed a driverless TTS on the Bonneville Salt Flats, then sent it up Pikes Peak and around Thunderhill. But now it's taking things a step further with the vehicle you see here.
This RS7 Sportback has been fitted with steering, brakes, throttle and transmission hooked up to a computer system that combines GPS, high-frequency radio signals and 3D imaging camera to drive the vehicle autonomously not just in slow-paced, stop-and-go traffic, but around the track at the same pace a professional racing driver would push it: full throttle on the straights, full braking before the corner and 1.1-g of cornering force.
As promised, Audi plans to unleash the self-driving RS7 - which it calls "the sportiest piloted driving car in the world" - at Hockenheim next weekend prior to the DTM season finale, where it is anticipated to pull a 2:10 lap time. The next stage will be to set it lose on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, all 154 turns and 13 miles of it, which ought to pose a heck of a challenge to the engineers from Ingolstadt. In the meantime you can scope it out in the high-res image gallery above and the second teaser video below.

VW offers to buy back new diesels if bans introduced

By Maria Sheahan FRANKFURT, Germany — Volkswagen will buy back new diesel cars if German cities ban them, it said on Thursday, seeking to reassure potential buyers and stem a plunge in sales of diesel vehicles. Europe's biggest automaker also said it would extend incentives for buyers of new diesel cars. The moves come after a German court ruled last month that cities in the country could ban the most polluting diesel vehicles from their streets. Many German cities exceed European Union limits on atmospheric nitrogen oxide, known to cause respiratory diseases. Fears of bans have led to a plunge in demand for diesel vehicles, which are also key to carmakers' attempts to meet new EU rules on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. While diesel cars are heavily criticized for emitting nitrogen oxide, they spew out less CO2 than gasoline equivalents. Diesel car sales plunged 19 percent in Germany last month. At its core VW brand, Volkswagen said its buyback offer applied to new diesels bought between April 1 and the end of 2018 and would kick in if the city in which the buyer lived or worked banned diesels within three years of the purchase. It said its dealerships would buy back diesel vehicles affected by bans at their current value if their owners at the same time bought a new vehicle that was not affected by cities' driving restrictions. At Czech brand Skoda, the guarantee applies to cars bought between April 1 and the end of June, but will cover bans introduced within four years of the purchase date. At premium brand Audi, the offer only covers leased vehicles. Volkswagen also said it was extending to the end of June incentives for customers trading in older diesels for new ones. Fellow German carmaker BMW said earlier this month it would offer to take back leased vehicles if diesels were banned within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of the operator's home or place of work. There has been a global backlash against diesel-engine cars since Volkswagen admitted in 2015 to cheating U.S. exhaust tests. But Germany's government is seeking to avoid widespread bans on heavily polluting diesel vehicles, which companies say could cut the resale value of up to 15 million vehicles in Europe's biggest car market. In Germany, where motorists expect to drive powerful cars on motorways with no speed limits, any restrictions will be unpopular.