As most owners here are aware, the cost of an A4 and the resulting features you get can vary by a large range. In my case I had a fully optioned and fully modified car and so that's all I can really compare. So this review isn't really intended to compare any A4 with any 335i, it is intended to compare my particular A4 with my 335i.
The Cars
My A4 was a 2009 Prestige/S-Line with a 6 spd manual. It had an APR K04 turbo/tune as well as a Eurocode HFC, crank pulley, FMIC, suspension bits and an AWE exhaust. It had nearly every performance mod available with the exception of meth injection. That more than closed the performance gap with a stock 335.
My 335 is a 2011 Premium/M-Sport with a 6 spd manual. It has the N55 engine (single twin scroll turbo) and I've owned it for 2,000 miles. It is fairly stock and the only performance mods I've installed is a FMIC and Cobb tune. I’ll likely add a HFC, larger turbo compressor wheel and custom tune but I haven’t done that yet.
A4 Pros
Interior: #1 pro has got to be the interior. The Prestige/S-Line car has perforated Alcantra upholstery coupled with the awesome seats and amazing fit and finish. It was fantastic. My 335 interior is pretty sedate by comparison. I don’t think it is so much that the 335 has a low quality interior but the A4 has an amazing one. I miss the quality of the A4 interior every time I get in my BMW. In addition, the back seat of the A4 is definitely larger which was nice for this father of two kids.
Exterior: This is subjective, but when properly equipped this car looks amazing. The base model never did much for me visually but the S-Line pkg makes it a real looker. The only thing I didn't like about the exterior were the ridiculously oversized side view mirrors. That and I hated trying to keep the Brilliant Black paint scratch free but that isn't the car's fault.
Reliability: I owned the car for 3 years/30k+ miles and it was very reliable for me. I took exceptional care of it and its only issues were a broken intake manifold (covered under warranty) and a leaking water pump. The Side Assist also went on the fritz intermittently but I never used that feature anyway so I didn't care. That few problems for a new model German car is pretty outstanding in my book. Plus the reliability got even better in the later model years. I did experience clutch failure at 50k miles which is incredibly quick. Not sure if I am to chalk this up to a weak ass clutch or to the first owner's lack of driving skill so I won't hold that against the car either.
Quattro: It is both a pro and con. It isn’t the world’s most sophisticated AWD system but when coupled with 4 winter tires I never struggled with traction in the snow. That being said, the car has no low end torque and so I felt like it mostly added weight and slowed the car down for the 98.5% of the time I wasn’t driving in the snow. But I’d take it over FWD.
MPG: I always got at least 26 mpg and usually it was even better. On the highway it could be as high as 36.
Eurocode Meisterwerk Shifter: I know this has nothing to do with a std A4 but I have to mention it because it is so amazing. I wish something similar was made for BMWs. If there are internal combustion engines in heaven, then all the cars have this shifter is installed. If you have a manual then stop wasting time and go buy one of these today. You could be operating at a level of shifting bliss that you never knew existed. Plus Eurocode is made in the USA and one of the best companies I have ever done business with.
A4 Cons
Power: When it was stock this car was a dog. Heavy as hell and no low end torque meant it was one of the slowest cars I have ever owned. It had decent acceleration for a narrow band of the rev range but it was gutless below 3k rpm. Getting started on a hill was a delicate balance that required some slipping of the clutch if you didn’t want to kill the engine. After I completed all the mods it had much better acceleration though it was still only in a narrow band. It still remained kind of slow below 2500 rpm and then ran out of steam above 5500 rpm. I suppose there is only so much that can be done with a 3,500 lb car sporting a 2.0L 4 banger.
Mods: Availability of mods was pretty limited. A custom tune option still does not look to exist. APR was clearly the most popular tune option and on the handful of times I required their help they proved to be totally arrogant and unhelpful. Apparently they are so busy that they simply do not have time for customers. The fact that they can succeed in the market with such terrible customer service goes to show you how limited the options are. It also sucks that once you tune the car, you can't really go back. I had minimal dealings with the dealership but it seems like Audi dealers are Nazis when it comes to TD1 and denying warranty coverage. I think I remember someone saying their dealer denied warranty coverage for plasti-dipping their wheels. Ridiculous.
Knowledge: Please don’t take this the wrong way but the private owner knowledge base on the B8 was pretty bad. Even a lot of enthusiasts didn't seem capable of replacing a spark plug themselves. Every time I had to do something on the car I felt like I was doing it for the first time outside of a dealership garage. Even when doing common stuff (cleaning carbon buildup, water pump replacement, even normal maintenance) it was near impossible to find any information. I tried to contribute to the knowledge base to help the situation but I'm just a hack mechanic and I wished there had been some actual experts out there sharing more knowledge. Apparently most (not all) new Audi owners are fairly hands off. This may not be such a problem in the years to come as I imagine the cars are dropping in price enough to get into the hands of people who are more likely to do their own repair work.
Stereo: I had the Bang & Olufsen stereo and it just sounded ok. It had minimal bass and the dash tweeters would hit a frequency that would make the whole dash rattle and buzz terribly with hardly any volume. It would have been unacceptable in a Honda Civic no less a luxury car with an upgraded stereo.
Steering Feel: The A4 is totally overboosted at low speed. It felt like my mother in law’s Lexus SUV. I have no idea what automotive engineer could have thought this was a good compromise for a sport sedan.
335i Pros
Power: This car is fast to start with and has minimal turbo lag. When you modify it it becomes a rocket. My car is already fast as hell and I’ve barely even done anything to it yet. A full bolt on car retaining the stock turbo pushes nearly 400 whp/500 w ft-lbs. Swap out the turbo and you can embarrass pretty much anything on the road except liter bikes and even those you can nearly keep up with. That is a completely insane amount of power and it is all possible on stock engine internals.
Mods: There are a ton of them and the price of entry is cheap. Got a 335 and $1,000? You too could blow the doors off Vettes. The most popular tunes (Burger Motorsports & Cobb) have A+ customer support and don’t seem to leave people hanging. In addition both tunes are completely undetectable by the dealer. The Cobb will reflash the ECU to stock in about 3 min and the Burger JB4 is a piggyback ECU you can just physically remove from the car. The dealer doesn't seem to care much about hardware mods and just overlooks them for the most part. There are probably a dozen vendors making a full range of parts for this car.
Knowledge: Lots of car people own BMWs. You’re never figuring something out for the first time and there is already a DIY for anything you may ever want to do to your car. Want to remove your engine? No problem, somebody’s done that then replaced it with an M5 V10. It may not be to the level of knowledge that a Ford Mustang or Jeep Wrangler forum would have but it is very comprehensive.
Rear Wheel Drive: This again is subjective but I personally like RWD cars. They’re lighter, less complex, more fun to drive and they get better gas mileage than an equivalent AWD car. For reasons unknown to me, Audi offers FWD. Probably because a good chunk of the owners are non-enthusiasts who don’t know if it is the front, rear or both axles powering their car. Not that it is probably any different with BMW owners but at least the BMW engineers realized that RWD on a sport sedan makes a hell of a lot more sense than FWD regardless of if their owners recognize it or not.
Steering Feel: The steering feel is excellent. It is heavy but not too heavy. If you get an M-Sport pkg equipped car then the steering wheel is nice and thick and the feel is even better. I didn't realize how much I didn't like the steering feel in my A4 until I got this car.
Reliability?: Supposedly the N55 cars are reliable. If they are, I haven’t experienced it yet.
335i Cons
Interior: As I mentioned above it isn’t so much that the 335 has a bad interior as the A4 has an amazing one. At least the Harman-Kardon stereo in my BMW is significantly better than the Bang & Olufsen one in the Audi was. The 335 cupholders are a total piece of crap afterthought.
Reliability?: I’ve had DME programming problems, a dying battery after just 33k miles, a leaking power steering pump, failed gas tank vent valve and a failed vacuum line. All in just 2,000 miles of ownership. That is the definition of crappy reliability. This many problems seems to be a total outlier though because most people with this car have had hardly any issues.
Open Rear Differential: This car should have come with a limited slip diff. You can easily break traction when turning with a fully stock car. Once you mod it you can do the same thing in a straight line. And because the ring gear is welded to the diff, even DIY’ing it to a limited slip is a $2,700 proposition. Crazy. AWD begins to look like a decent option. Too bad the AWD pkg sucks.
AWD Package: Stupidly BMW removes the sport suspension from all AWD car regardless of build configuration. This gives you a tall ride height and soft suspension. AWD 335’s are actually quicker than RWD cars since maintaining traction with that much power is a problem. Unfortunately you’re then stuck with the std suspension and you've got to add $1,500+ for springs/shocks/roll bars if you want decent handling returned to the car. I would have considered an AWD car if not for this fact. It complicated finding a car for me since modern day car marketing has convinced the masses that they need AWD if they expect to see 1/2" of snow per year. So in Colorado finding a RWD car wasn't happening and I was forced to go out of state for the 4th time in a row to find the right car.
Run Flat Tires: They cost more, have worse handling and are regularly destroyed by medium sized potholes. Fortunately my original tires got replaced with non-RFT tires just before I bought the car. Unfortunately there is still no space for a spare tire so you need to buy a spare tire/jack/lug nut wrench and have it take up space in your trunk if don’t want to be SOL when you get a flat tire. That's exactly what I want to carry around all the time in my already small trunk.
MPG: I don’t get more than 23 mpg. If you drive fast and are at lower elevation then 20 mpg probably isn’t out of the question. An AWD car would do even worse.
Wash: The following things were similar for both cars.
Maintenance: The std maintenance on both cars suck. Audi maintenance (at least at the dealer) is a complete rip off. They are obviously banking on an uneducated owner base or scaring people into thinking they need to have work done at the dealer in order to keep their warranty. Their recommended maintenance covers almost nothing anyway. BMW maintenance is free for the first 50k miles but it also covers almost nothing. Oil changes every 15,000 miles? Yeah that's exactly what I want to do on my new $50,000 luxury automobile. Save $50 per year by hardly ever changing the most key fluid in the car. The approaches for both manufacturers are moronic.
Summary
Both cars were amazing and clearly at the top of the heap when it comes to sport sedans. Obviously the BMW is what I preferred since that's what I ended up with. The A4 was my first Audi and honestly because of the significance of some of my previously mentions cons, I think it will be my last. That being said, how significant both the pros and cons are to others will depend on what you’re looking for in a car. The biggest difference between the two cars was the power difference with a fully stock A4 having almost an unacceptable amount of it. But that can be remedied pretty easily with a tune of any kind (at the expense of your warranty). Since I am much more of a performance enthusiast, it is no surprise that the more performance oriented BMW is what I preferred. The A4 was certainly not a bad car though. No question if I’d kept it that I’d still enjoy driving it every day. The new owner just texted me the other day saying he’s had 0 issues and is loving it. I’m glad it went to a good home to someone who will enjoy it.
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Originally Posted by pwdrskr
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