They Just Don’t Make Things Like They Used To

What a fiasco.

I drove down to the Audi dealer today to pick up our brand spanking new A6 Avant.

At first, all appeared well. The car was gleaming away in the showroom with just 29 km on the clock. The colour and the upholstery looked great. A quick glance around the cabin seemed to indicate that all of the obvious features I had ordered had been built in. In summary, everything looked ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

Then we took it outside, the dealer and I, and got inside to run through some of the less obvious features. And then it started.

First of all, I found I couldn’t adjust the left wing mirror properly. It didn’t seem to be seated properly and manually tampering with it didn’t seem to help, either. The salesman offered to let the annexed garage have a look at it.

Picking another feature at random, I thought I’d adjust the steering column for my driving position. I pushed the switch towards me and out slid the steering column. Then I pushed the switch downwards to lower the column and… nothing happened. Was it already lowered all the way? I pushed the switch up to raise the column. Still nothing. Bollocks!

Who knows whether the car has other problems, because at this point, the salesman took the car around to the garage to have them look at it. With 2 out of 2 features demonstrating faults and it already being the middle of the afternoon, there was no time to waste.

The mirror issue was corrected very quickly. It just needed some manual adjustment. The uncooperative steering column, however, pissed on everyone’s fireworks.

After hooking the car up to the computer diagnostic apparatus, the car was given the once-over. Nothing obvious leapt out and even the switch that controls the steering column passed its individual test, so the thought now is that the motor that moves the column through the vertical plane is buggered.

It being late in the day, all hopes of driving the car away today were dashed. The car will be more heavily investigated tomorrow. Hopefully, it will turn out to be a very minor fault and they will be able to correct it on the spot.

Electronic problems like this are the main reason I went for an Audi over a Mercedes or a BMW. Humph. This is not an auspicious start.

Meanwhile, the registration paperwork is now in my name and the car is insured. That means I’ll get a road tax bill before very long, so the sooner the car actually gets on the road, the better.

Hopefully, this will just take a day or two to sort out and then I’ll be the proud owner of a brand new car for the first time ever. What a disappointment. Even with something this expensive, quality still isn’t guaranteed.

They just don’t make things like they used to.