It's not because your A4 is very reliable, because it's not. It's because you all void your warranty chipping your underpowered cars. Good for Audi, bad for you.

Here's how I came to this conclusion. It seems that many older Americans have not yet come to terms with the idea that a small powerplant like the 1.8T can safely / actually produce the tremendous amounts of power it is capable of. <p>The older generation of Americans were brought up on relatively (by todays standards) unsophisticated large displacement V8, V6 and a few I6 designs. It seems to me that most older people (gearheads too) I've talked to seem very skeptical of the idea that one could EASILY squeeze 200+ HP out of my little, "cute" I4 1.8T...god it makes me sick. I listen to them extoll their rhetoric about how fast such and such car was..and how it would wip ass on anything that's on the road today :) Whenever I play racing games with my dad..he always picks the Camaro...or the Corvette, and then he gets pissed off when I kick his ass with a Nissan Skyline or something like that...he always claims the game must be rigged or the models of the cars dynamics are poor...yet I try to explain to him that older cars like classic vettes and Camaro's handle like **** and that's why he's all over the road when we play, what would you expect from a car with a solid rear axle.<p>Anyhow so in marketing the A4 to the American population I believe Audi chose to detune the I4 design in order to give the V6 the better HP numbers in order to capture the older buyers who can and will pay the, "premium" for the V6 power plant. The rest of us who recognize the potential of the detuned I4 powerplant will buy the 1.8T...as far as Audi is concerned...they've made thier cake and eaten it too...they have captured both market segments with one product and two engines.<p>BTW - this is only my take..no flames please..I love the 2.8, but for the money I saved I can easily catch up by modding my 1.8T..not that it's really that much slower than a 2.8 anyhow...just a little rougher under hard acceleration.

nt.<p>'99 Silver 2.8QMS