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My Audi to BMW to Skoda to Audi journey


drpellypo
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After I got shot of the Passat I decided to upgrade to something bigger (don't ask my why. I had a 5 year old step son at the time, so absolutely no need for such a big car.) I got chatting to a guy on VWAudi forum who had bought a really high spec'd A6 from brand new. He was an aircraft engineer and did everything himself. And he treated the car like it was an aeroplane, fixing everything pre-emptively. He even found out what parts Audi had changed on later models, and bought and fitted them. The car was beyond immaculate. He'd only every driven it on his own, so the interior was immaculate. I took what turned out to be a 7 hour train journey to Southampton and bought the car having only spent about two minutes looking at it. Fast forward 3 years and by this point we had two children of our own, both under 3, both requiring full size car seats. The step son who was now a teenager, was packed in the middle of said car seats and we realised the A6 was simply not big enough. Somewhat reluctantly I ended up trading it in and getting an X5. It was a 4.4 V8 and my word was it quick. Awesome car that did us well until we decided we now needed a bigger house. Unfortunately, despite looking for months, we couldn't find anything suitable in the immediate area, so had to settle on a place 5 miles away. This became somewhat of an issue in terms of running costs of the X5 because MrsP went from walking to school and nursery every day, to having to drive. Because of finishing times this meant the X5 was doing 6 trips a day to schools, and at an average of 14mpg, the fuel cost became eye watering. So we decided it was time to go. Throughout this I'd kept a hold of the Skoda Fabia as a runabout. Handy for bombing to work and back, and proved to be a solid and super reliable car. However, as much as I loved that little Fabia, I really did miss having a big car, so I went about trying to track my old A6 down. I was devastated to find out that, a month after trading it in, it was involved in a hit and run (into a house!) and written off. Because it had gotten to nearly 200,000 miles, it was obviously considered uneconomical to repair, and seems to have vanished off the tax and MOT database, so I guessed it was scrapped. I really love the shape of the C5 A6's and made it my aim to find one that had been as well looked after as the one I bought before the X5. That task proved impossible. Every one I found hadn't been looked after properly. It's like they'd got to a certain age and servicing and maintaining became less important.

One of the reasons id been so impressed with the A6 is that my dad-in-law bought a 2.8 Quattro when it was 2 years old in 2002, and still owned it, having not had to do really that much work to it. Incidentally, the only thing I did to mine in some 45,000 miles was to have to turbo cleaned because of a sticking VNT mechanism. Not a single thing ever went wrong with it.

Sat in a pub with said dad-in-law, I was recalling how much I missed the A6 and how I couldn't find a decent one like his. "Well why don't you have mine" he said. Turns out he was looking at getting something smaller after owning the A6 for 14 years. So this Sunday I pick up a 2.8 Quattro with a measly 171,000 miles on the clock, and the total cost of the car... Absolutely nothing! So here I am back in the Audi club. The Skoda is staying parked up on the drive (can't bear to let it go,) and has been replaced with a 2012 Fiat 500 for the school run. Horrible, slow car, but the wife likes it, and I managed to pick one up with only 11,000 miles on the clock for half of what it cost new!

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Absolutely. I appreciate it's a Fiat, so a poor metric, but at 12,000 miles the 500 has already had a broken door handle, several pieces of interior trim broke, a dodgy earth wire from the battery, and the boot lock is on its way out. All this 2 months after warranty ran out :/

 

Classic!  :roflmao:

 

Agree, some of the C5 A6's I see now, do look very ropey.

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One of the reasons id been so impressed with the A6 is that my dad-in-law bought a 2.8 Quattro when it was 2 years old in 2002, and still owned it, having not had to do really that much work to it. Incidentally, the only thing I did to mine in some 45,000 miles was to have to turbo cleaned because of a sticking VNT mechanism. Not a single thing ever went wrong with it.

Sat in a pub with said dad-in-law, I was recalling how much I missed the A6 and how I couldn't find a decent one like his. "Well why don't you have mine" he said. Turns out he was looking at getting something smaller after owning the A6 for 14 years. So this Sunday I pick up a 2.8 Quattro with a measly 171,000 miles on the clock, and the total cost of the car... Absolutely nothing! So here I am back in the Audi club. The Skoda is staying parked up on the drive (can't bear to let it go,) and has been replaced with a 2012 Fiat 500 for the school run. Horrible, slow car, but the wife likes it, and I managed to pick one up with only 11,000 miles on the clock for half of what it cost new!

 

It gets used and abused, but I quite like my 2.8 quattro (99 facelift B5).  I want to say congrats on your new purchase.  But I can't, as it was free you jammy git!  +++

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Absolutely. I appreciate it's a Fiat, so a poor metric, but at 12,000 miles the 500 has already had a broken door handle, several pieces of interior trim broke, a dodgy earth wire from the battery, and the boot lock is on its way out. All this 2 months after warranty ran out :/

Mrs Ms 500 has a full new dashboard after going in for a new thermostat as a recall and coming out with the instruments not working?!

We sold hers to WBAC will nearly 11k on it.

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