Barrels41

If you live in WA perhaps winter tires are better than all seasons. Buy a set of winter wheels that are easy to clean. Audi brakes are very dusty. Any wheel is dirty in a few days. I heard there are no TPMS sensors after 2010. I suggest checking with tire rack.

GUEST123

I concur! The limited number of colors is frustrating, but it's not just Audi, but VW and a lot of other manufacturers. I believe the issue is primarily cost control -- the probably make runs of dozens of cars in one color before switching to another color. It's got to be expensive to stop the line and switch colors just for someone's special order. So instead, only when there are a sufficient number of cars waiting to be painted in a specific color, they change out the paint to the new color and do them.

So in my case, I ordered a 2011 S4 on July 19th with the "standard" R8 Jet Blue color. However because they probably aren't producing all that many R8s in Jet Blue, my car has to be staged to be painted when they schedule a run of Jet Blue cars -- of course that could include not only R8s, but every other model in Audi's lineup where someone opted for that color. The $2500 special paint charge I have to pay is probably mostly for the special handling my S4 will have to have to pull it off the S4 line and stage it with other cars on the day(s) when everything is painted Jet Blue. I suspect this special handling is also the reason my car's current ETA isn't until December 13th -- almost a 5 month wait!

While I'm sure that colors like Garnet Red and Jet Blue would indeed be highly popular, the folks who pay the rather outlandish Audi Special Paint fee do manage to get a color they really like and can live with for a long time, and one that truly is "exclusive" and not likely to be seen very often, if at all, on other Audi cars. I've had many silver cars (including a 2004 R32 I just sold this summer), and the other available S4 standard and metallic colors just didn't appeal to me. I figure I'll have this car for at least 10 years, so opting for the special color was worth it IMO. Actually, I would have liked to have ordered the wild "Glut Orange" as depicted on this S5 http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4137/...dfa50e9c_b.jpg. That is almost exactly the same as the Inka Orange color on a '74 BMW 2002Tii that I owned many years ago. Bright Surf Green on a '96 Mk3 VR6 GTI was another favorite color. But my other half figured it was time for something nice, but more sedate, so the Jet Blue won out.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the day when I can drive the S4 instead of just writing about it!

KremlinGremlin

Yeah, you make a good point about the assembly-line like procedure, it should cost money and a proper optimization technique should be in place. But that still doesn't account for Audi having less color selection than other brands such as BMW. I may be wrong, but if Garnet Red and Aruba Blue were regular Pearl/Metallic colors costing $475, you could still batch everything out like you stated above, but instead of having to pay that much money, simply let people order and they will buy. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't believe that Aruba Blue Pearl was so unpopular that so few people ordered it that they had to replace it. It would make sense to postpone the order and wait until a proper amount of cars of that color are queued and then do them all at the same time, and thus give the customer more choices, rather than immediately charge the customer for the color and set their color in the queue to wait. That's okay though - got my Aruba Blue =)


On another note. Saw a 2012 A8 at the dealership when we were processing the order with the dealer. It looked stunning - except for the grille. It looked like this: http://www.audicts.com/wp-content/up...12-Audi-A8.jpg

Pretty ugly looking IMHO.

wpg2.0T

My Garnet Red B8 Avant S-Line should be here in mid-Oct. Looking forward to having a "not so popular" colour.

GUEST123

Nice A8, but that grill is butt-ugly! BTW, was on the Fourtitude site looking at the 4 Season Test on the 2009 Jet Blue S5 he had (http://www.fourtitude.com/news/publi...cle_4462.shtml). Here's a brief excerpt from that 1st article in the series:

"For most vehicles, tailoring is focused on the most obvious and striking of changes – custom paint. Audi Exclusive is willing to paint your new Audi literally any color you want with just two limitations. First, Audi AG utilizes water-based paint systems nowadays, so any paint code has to be compatible with that process. Second, Audi has decided not to paint any cars in codes utilized by its wholly owned Italian subsidiary Lamborghini. Other than that, the sky is the limit. For this service, Audi charges a $2,500 premium.

Audi Exclusive does offer more customization in the USA, and each dealer can provide more information on the program. For this S5, the program is currently limited to solely exterior color. The TT has several predetermined Audi Exclusive color-accented interior packages and one can choose all sorts of interior tailoring options for the most expensive cars in the lineup – the A8/S8 and the R8."

Someone recently told me that the one Audi color that is not available in the exclusive program is the pearlescent white that used to be available back in the 90s (as I recall). Apparently there is something about that color that does not work in the water-based formulations. Be sure to take a look at the Fourtitude Audi Exclusive Blog for some interesting variations in colors: http://forums.fourtitude.com/blog.ph...gcategoryid=29

ChgoSkier

Congrats! You're going to love it.

I ordered 2.0T Premium in late May and picked it up at the end of July. It replaced my 2001 A4 1.8T. It was hard to let go of a great 10 year old car, but I love the 2011.

gunsmoker

Just ordered a premium plus quattro in ice silver with light gray interior, 18" sport package, walnut inlays and chrome exhaust tips.
I hope they will be able to get me all-season tires instead of the summer ones. The ETA is January 2012. Got $2700 off the MSRP.

TIME89

Congratulation!
Can't wait to see pics of your car - very interesting color combo.

KremlinGremlin

The Jet Blue looks amazing on the S5...hopefully I can be a proud owner of such a car sometime in the future.

What are the advantages of all-seasons vs. summer only. I asked the dealer and he said there was no difference and I could drive with them all year.

I will definitely post pics as soon as I get it.