2005 Audi A8 4.2 Quattro – Best used luxury sedan?

Today we review this classic 2005 Audi A8 Quattro. How has 15 years of Audi engineering held up? Find out as Iordan takes you on a Virtual test Drive with this legendary luxury sedan.

One of these days i’ll figure out a way to make you say that we’re okay we’re okay one of these days i could take my life away and you’d be left with all this pain is that okay you got it how’s it going everyone we are back i want to take a moment to say sorry we’ve been absent for quite some time as we noticed there’s a lot of world events going on

Right now the covet virus hit very strong here in quebec quebec canada that is so we’ve been quarantined for quite a bit and i didn’t have the opportunity to test drive any new vehicles during the time uh so i did shoot a few reviews with a bunch of older cars older luxury cars hence today’s video with this 2005 audi a8 that’s right today we have an a8 a 15

Year old a8 that is so right off the bat i want you to pay attention to one thing and it is its massive size this is one big vehicle but the thing is this is even the extended wheelbase this is the very normal audi a8 because you do have the extended l wheelbase which adds quite an extra foot to the car itself making it ultimately massive but one of the main

Advantages to this vehicle today and all a8s actually is the fact that they are fully aluminum which is why most a8 models that are for sale on the market right now are fairly clean examples and this was a 90 000 car back in 0.5 and the people that could afford this car mostly are in the older category of people so they definitely take care of it they baby

The cars they maintain them properly i am going to talk a little bit about common issues from this car because there is a few of them now the first thing that is very prone to fail on this vehicle is those notorious air suspensions that’s right this car comes standard from the factory with four strut air suspensions all pumped through a compressor now that’s

All fun in games it’s great for right comfort also good for balancing stability as well as body roll not so good in the long run when your struts do leak and it costs a fortune to have this repaired now this particular vehicle is still its original struts but the owner is saying it’s starting to give him little problems here and there sometimes he leaves the

Car and the car just crashes down overnight that means it must be a leak somewhere in the cushions as well the compressor when it does pump it’s starting to develop a little bit of a smell and you’re looking at a good two three maybe four thousand dollars with labor to have it fixed which is one of the reasons why these cars go quite cheap in the used market so

You might be wondering how cheap you could get these cars in the used market well this particular example was purchased about a year and a half ago from a private seller and it was purchased for not more than 4 000 canadian dollars that is crazy if you think about it 4 000 canadian dollars for a car that used to cost well over 90 000 back in 2005 but that’s the

Thing with these used models they’re probably not expensive to buy but they are extremely expensive to upkeep and god forbid you need to do serious work on them so this is where really this car shines it is the classic naturally aspirated 4.2 liter v8 engine that has been around since the 90s audi has developed it for the audi v8 back in the 90s and they’ve

Been honestly just tweaking and improving it over the years and yes it is the same derivative engine that is in the r8 the 4.2 liter r8 not the not the v10 one the 4.2 liter it is all derived from this engine but this particular one hasn’t been tuned for performance it’s been tuned for comfort it is so smooth so quiet it is literally the luxury version of this

V8 not underpowered neither it develops 335 horsepower at 6 500 rpm in 317 pound feet at about 25 3000 rpm so it is a little bit high not super low end torque not like the figures we’re used to in today’s modern cars but again as i mentioned this is not supposed to be a fast variant of the a8 engine this is supposed to be a very comfortable everyday luxury

Four-door sedan you want performance you opt for the v10 5.2 s8 model that is a monster and is a completely different car but yes also in o5 you did have the optional variant of fitting in a w12 for all those that watched the transporter movies that’s what was fitted in there but they are quite rare and if you do get your hands on them quite expensive to

Maintain as well so today this is why we have the very base model so without further ado i say let’s hop into the front seat of this car take it for a spin see how it rides and let’s see how 15 years of audi engineering has held up over time let’s go all right and we are off for a spin in this 2005 audi a8 all right i’m gonna start off with the very first

Thing those seats oh my god those seats feel like a lazy boy couch it is impressive honestly i have never seen more adjustable seats than this it is beyond insane you can adjust bolstering in four different ways leg extensions electric as well and you can also adjust the back rest of the seat i mean don’t forget this car 15 years ago was the pinnacle of

Luxury that along with the s-class mercedes-benz and the seven series of bmws mind you the a8 wasn’t as popular as the s-class or the seven series because it kept things very minimalistic and very simplistic that has always been audi’s model they have constantly kept their interiors very conservative which i find is a good thing because that doesn’t make the

Cars overly dated when you look at them i mean look at this interior 15 year old interior and it is still relatively modern by today’s standards i mean there are things that give it away for its age i mean that old school looking steering wheel it really is old-school looking the infotainment system is super dated the cluster gauge is super dated as well you

Don’t get as much information as you would like to get for example your mpg that doesn’t really quite show up you just get your radio station your temperature and your mileage to empty that’s about it but for everything else it looks definitely much newer than a 15 year old car now do not expect this car to be any fast like i said the engine was tuned for

Smoothness not speed so if i put my foot down on the highway the grunt is there it definitely goes up it it this being naturally aspirated gives you no turbo lag uh the six speed is pretty decent it is a zf six-speed automatic transmission does its job well torque converted not the quickest thing on the market you could put it in tiptronic mode i won’t even

Bother honestly i don’t see the utility of it uh 15 year old transmission tunings were not the way they were uh back in the day compared to today’s vehicles but my god i am so shocked overall this car is a steal for 4 500 canadian dollars a ultimate steal now let’s talk about this car’s fuel efficiency yeah it is not fantastic so in the city according to audi

This car averages 14.7 liters per hundred ouch that’s pretty brutal for today’s standards a highway is not so bad you’re averaging about 10.7 liters per hundred okay it’s pretty awful i’ll be honest to you especially when today’s cars can get an easy fuel efficiency of 6.2 6.5 on the highway but i mean for a 15 year old vehicle it is still not that bad i mean

You combine it you’re getting about 13.1 it is a huge v8 powered luxury four-door sedan but again there’s nothing better than that v8 growl let’s down step it it’s so quiet but it’s so smooth wow and it pulls it really pulls very well on the highway you want to overtake you will not have a single issue overtaking all right we have a nice little curve let’s see

How stability is heavy heavy car and oh my god it stays planted wow those air suspensions doing their job i’m feeling them trying to prevent the body roll brakes suck all right brake test that was yeah the brakes suck uh again i don’t know if it’s attributed to the fact that this car is quite old there is no feeling whatsoever and the travel is pretty big so

If you’re gonna break plan ahead but again i’m coming down to this engine fantastic engine i really feel we can squeeze much more power in if this had a more new and updated transmission but i mean this six-speed zf does its job quite well all right so currently we’re driving at 50 let’s floor it and let’s see how quick everything is to respond all right ready

Go all right it pulls it pulls it pulls so much and it keeps going all right the transmission was surprisingly quicker than i thought it i downshifted surprisingly quick um this being a six-speed automatic the gearing is long as you noticed we stayed in what was second gear i believe for quite some time but the beautiful thing about this engine and its linear

Power delivery it was the second the transmission downshifted it was a constant constant pull shifted gears very comfortably shifted gears and it just kept pulling all right so we’ve talked about comfort quite extensively i mean let’s see how this car does behave a little bit in back roads i’m not gonna push it in any way uh this car was not made to be pushed

In back roads but i mean we got it in dynamic mode let’s shift it down into s and let’s see how the transmission in the car behaves all right we have a knife’s curve coming here all right the car feels feels heavy because it is a heavy car it takes up quite a bit of the road i’m not feeling extremely confident in the curves with it but i mean the engine and

The transmission is really well tuned though i do have to give it that i already have a nice curve coming here car takes a little bit of a while to react but once you’re in the curve and hitting the apex i mean it feels confident it feels confident all right ooh those brakes though those brakes are not good all right here god the transmission’s good wow very

Good transmission the car pulls very well i really like the fact that there is no turbo lag whatsoever all right coming on hard here brakes very early braking all right yeah i feel the suspension working i feel the air compressor pumping and keeping the body in check really feel it everywhere all right here um surprisingly precise as well the steering is really

Not that bad you point it and it goes where you want it to go but yeah it’s a heavy car oh my goodness it’s a heavy car all right but it’s pulling good oh yeah wow okay good job have another curve coming here all right it took it super well super well another big one here i’m a little lost for words i was not expecting that really not expecting that transmission

Doing its job so well the air suspension is good all right so let’s put the car back into standard suspension i could see the graph it started raising my vehicle a little bit uh that helps it a lot more with the travel of the suspension oh my god i just went through bumpy train track roads and i barely feel it now one distinctive difference between dynamic

And standard mode in the suspension setting is you’re going to get a significant amount of body roll and a significant amount of bounce from the suspension if you keep it in standard mode all right so let me give you my final thoughts on this car number one was not expecting the car to handle the way it did in dynamic mode uh don’t bother trying to make it

Handle like that in standard you really need to put the suspension in dynamic number two i did not expect this car to be that comfortable in that quiet i definitely expected it to have comfort luxury and all that but from a 15 year old luxury sedan i was not expecting it to be at that level one letdown that i do have to say is that infotainment system extremely

Dated extremely early iterations of audi’s mmi so really that is the only possible thing that will date this vehicle but the best part is you don’t want to have a dated look and you ever have a sling look you press this little button here screen folds right in and you have a beautiful clean swooping wood accented view of your dashboard so overall i believe if

You manage to get your hands on a used audi a8 from the d3 era that’s the model call of this car is the d3 if you do manage to get your hands on a nice clean example for uh not too expensive i say go for it i do not believe you will find anything else in this segment or category that will exude that type of prestige that type of comfort that type of luxury

For that price point but expect to pay a small fortune on maintenance like i said earlier if your suspension system fails and they will fail it is a known issue when it does fail you’re practically looking at the price that it cost you to buy this car but still that’s the price to pay for comfort and luxury so i want to start off and say thank you to all

For the massive support i’m very sorry we didn’t get any videos out during the covet and during the quarantine but we do have multiple videos lined up for the summer please don’t forget to subscribe to our channel don’t forget to like and don’t forget this video is not monetized like any of our other videos on the channel they are not monetized i am strictly

Doing this for fun and enjoyment and i hope it translates to you guys as well and i hope it helps you into your hunt for awesome cool luxury german cars so this is jordan signing off and i hope you guys have a fabulous day and we’ll see each other very soon thank everyone have a great day

Transcribed from video
2005 Audi A8 4.2 Quattro – Best used luxury sedan? By VtestDrive