featherpillow

Those are steel bodied cars. The D3 A8 is aluminum.

I moved from an E38 7 series BMW to an '05 A8L a few years ago. I chose the A8L because the '05 7 series looks like an upside down bathtub on wheels. The only thing Chris Bangle did for BMW was to make all their cars look like grotesque Chrysler rejects. Have you seen that new 6 series? It looks like a bloated Sebring.

In inclement weather, the A8 is the better handling car. There's simply no contest between the A8 and the other luxo-barge cars on the market.

Aside from that, I HATED the A8L. It was a huge POS with uncomfortable seats and crappy build quality. Everyone who says otherwise has low standards, no offense. It killed my back on long trips, and the interior trim was always falling apart. The dash vent trim was always falling off. The stupid MMI screen broke two months after I bought the car, the CD player died, the Bose amplifier died, the parking brake warning sensor died, the tire pressure monitor system died, and eventually the entire stupid MMI control board died. I don't mind paying for maintenance but jeez. I only had the car for a year and a half.

I considered pushing the Audi off a cliff and collecting insurance money, but we don't have any cliffs in Chicago so I traded it in on an S8.

I love the S8. It's probably the first car I've ever had that I plan on keeping for several years.

Brozee

The BMW's as of late are ugly. Plain and simple to me. All these cars will have electrical demons. Only reason im driving it is because I feel safer in a large car. (large is an understatement)

Edd W

I agree, I have had 2 BMW's in the past and enjoyed driving both in good weather but as soon as it rains or worse it is easy to dislike them.
The refinement of the whole drivetrain is better but overall, my choice is easy to see - I am now on my 5th Audi in a row and still happy.

My wife will probably go back to another Audi if we sell the Touareg but that is still a great car. I like some of the features that has even over the A8. The DiS is far better and details like electric control over the child locks on each rear door and window separately - never seen this in any other car and is an easy feature to get used to.

I still think my 'most fun' Audi was my first - a 1994 80 sport, this was the most fun five seater you could have at the time and I sold it for more than I bought it for after 2 years and adding about 60k miles.

Mike_k

I wasn't comparing it to the D3.

I don't get this. On one hand you say that the build quality was terrible and anyone that disagrees doesn't know true quality but then you go on to say that you purchased the same car with a different engine and you "love it"? They're the same platform and for the the most part, the same car. Sounds to me like your specific A8 was the issue and not the D3 in general. The things you seemed to hate on your A8 aren't different on an S8. Build quality, MMI interface, amps, etc all carry over.

featherpillow

But everyone else was.