Audi

Audi, in my opinion, makes nice cars, but the designers often seem to make things considerably worse, for no apparent reason, in later models.

I've had a few in my time:

• A 1994 A4 saloon
• A 2002 A3 hatchback
• A 2012 Q3 quattro
• A 2022 Q3 automatic (all the others had manual gearboxes)

I generally keep cars for about 10 years, as you can see from the above, and I've never bought one from new (and never intend to, considering how much they lose in value by the time you first fill them up with fuel).

However, I do wonder what the hell the designers are up to when they decide to change some feature and clearly make it worse in a later model of car.

For example:

• My 2002 A3 had a very useful drawer underneath the front passenger seat, which was big enough for a roll of duct-tape, or a scarf and a pair of gloves, or quite a lot of paperwork (I used to keep my petrol receipts in it).
  • The 2012 Q3 which I then bought has no such drawer at all, even though there's plenty of space for one.
  • The 2022 Q3 once again has a little drawer under the front passenger seat, but this time the emphasis is on "little". It is so small, and folds open instead of sliding out like a normal drawer (the way the one in the A3 did), that it's pretty useless.

• The 2012 Q3 had a storage area in the rear armrest (as well as having a pair of cup-holders there). This was useful for keeping a torch, some tissues, sticking plasters etc.
  • The 2022 Q3 which I bought has no storage area in that armrest at all; just a pair of cup-holders.

• The 2012 Q3 had a storage area in the front armrest, which also had a strange socket on the bottom, into which you could plug a special adapter cable with a USB-A socket on the end, in order to connect a standard USB storage device for the multimedia system.
  • The 2022 Q3's equivalent storage area is smaller, and has no such socket - instead there are two USB-C sockets (no USB-A at all) mounted just underneath the air conditioning controls, where any standard USB stick you plug in is extremely vulnerable to being bent or knocked out of the socket, and any cable you plug in is likely to get in the way of the gear selector or the air conditioning controls.

• The 2002 A3 had a very nice little plastic flap mounted at the top of the centre of the windscreen, just behind the rear-view mirror; you could fold this flap down to shield against sunshine coming directly above the mirror.
  • Neither of the Q3s have such a flap, although they still have the gap between the top of the mirror and the top of the windscreen.

• The 2002 A3 had a media system with a radio, a cassette player, a 6-disc multi-CD player, and an option to fit a bigger (up to 18 discs) CD changer in the boot of the car.
  • The 2012 Q3 no longer had the cassette player,could only take a single CD, and had no facility for a CD changer.
  • The 2022 Q3 doesn't even take CDs, although there's a strange CD-player shaped thing in the glove compartment, which has a completely blank front; I have no idea what this thing might be.

• The USB storage device you plugged in to the 2012 Q3 could have the standard 4 primary partitions in an MS-Dos-style partition table.
  • On the 2022 Q3, it only recognises 2 such partitions - it tells you this in the manual - why???

• The 2002 A3 had a very small storage area with a door just in front of the driver's knee (it's actually very easy not to even know it's there unless you either read the manual or kneel down from outside the car and look into the driver's footwell, maybe because you're looking for the OBD-II socket). You could keep things like insurance documents there - there was just enough space for a few A6-sized papers (so, A4 folded into quarters), but they had a tendency to slip down the back of the area when you closed the door, making them very difficult to find afterwards.
  • The 2012 Q3 had a better design of this little storage area - much the same size, but there was a back to it so that papers couldn't slip into obscurity when you closed the door.
  • The 2022 Q3 has the same concept, but it's a lot smaller, and won't even take A6 sized papers. What you are expected usefully to be able to keep in this thing, I have no idea.

The biggest complaint I have about the 2022 Q3 though is that it has no spare wheel, and you can't even fit one.

There is no jack, no spanner for undoing the wheelnuts (so, anyone who wants to change between summer and winter tyres, which is quite common in Germany, where these cars are designed and manufactured, is basically being told "take it to a garage and pay them to change the wheels for you") and no space for retro-fitting a spare wheel. If the solid foam moulding in the boot were designed the same way as the one in the 2012 Q3, everything would be fine, and you could get a spare wheel in there, but Audi seem to have decided that anyone who gets a puncture has to pretend they're riding a bicycle, and actually use a puncture repair kit to get them a maximum of 50km to somewhere who will sell them a new tyre. How do you do that in the middle of rural France at 2am on a Sunday, I wonder?

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