My New Audi A6

I recently decided it was time for a new car. I have been driving my current vehicle, a Mercedes E350 for 5 years now. I have put 120,000 miles on the car and it has been an absolutely wonderful car. Suzanne’s car is getting long in the tooth too and I really don’t want to have to replace two at once. And it would be nice if we could hang on to the Honda for the kids to drive in a couple years when they get licenses.

The Mercedes has another 100K of miles left on it easy. So giving it to Suzanne now, she wont have any problem getting 5 more years out of and we can just deal with one car payment at a time. If things work out perfectly, she can keep getting hand me down cars from me while I get the new one. Yeah, I know, sounds perfect for me, but it actually works out well for us.

I have been doing some research on cars, but really had my heart set on a new Mercedes E350. Why not? This one has been the closest car I have owned to calling ‘Perfect’. And last year they came out with a updated model with some snazzy new features. I was vaguely considering a two seat roadster too such as the Mercedes SLK350. I am not really a two seater kind of guy, but the lines are nice and its actually cheaper.

Yesterday, with lots of data in hand, we set out to look at cars. I decided that I would go drive an Audi TTS and an A6. While in Germany on business before, I had rented an A8 and really liked it (for $70K one should!). The Audi dealer was our first stop. I quickly dismissed the TTS – not because of anything wrong with the car, just I like the bigger luxury car better. The A6 caught my eyes and I found it quite an attractive car. The interior is very nicely apportioned too. We took a test drive and fell in love with the handling and driving qualities of the car. It was really quite remarkable.

We talked a little bit of price with the dealer, but I was clear that I needed to go check out the Mercedes E350 because that’s where I had been leaning. He had no problem with that. In fact, he used to sell Mercedes so of course, got the ‘Why Audi is better’ spiel. But in a weird twist, he offered to take me over to the Mercedes Dealership and show me the E350. In fact, he wanted to take the Audi A6 over and park the two side by side to do a comparison. I had never heard of such a thing. Now, both the Audi dealership and the Mercedes dealership are owned by Chapman Automotive here in Tucson, so there is a little bit of a tie in.

So we drove the A6 over to the Mercedes dealer. My Audi dealer knew most of the Mercedes salesman. We took the E350 for a test drive and parked the cars side by side. And frankly, after a detailed comparison, it was no contest. The Audi, in my opinion, was the clear and easy winner. This flip flop came as a total surprise to me as I was thinking Mercedes all the way heading into town.

So, we went back worked the price a bit more and got it to a comfortable point. But I wanted to take some time and analyze my data and thoughts. So we broke to go get some food. Over the meal, it was obvious to all of use (Suzanne and Savannah were there too), that the Audi was the right car. A bit more time to make sure now was the right time to buy a new car (my yearly bonus from work helped!) and we headed back to Audi and did the deal.

I am really excited about this car! It caught me by surprise but the drive home through the mountain pass reaffirmed my thoughts.

Check out my new Audi A6 automobile photo gallery.