The 2025 Audi A3 looks sharper and comes with more tech, but you will have to pay a subscription for some basic in-car features.
So far there's subscriptions for cruise control, adaptive beams, various navigation options, apple/google integration and my favorite, dual-zone climate.
I mean. America's isn't doing much better on the engineering front. Ford and Chrysler issued the most recalls in 2023 apparently. GM is also in the top 10.
No doubt, though I would point to the US automakers being too busy being obsessed with annihilating worker power and unions over the last 50 years as the primary reason American cars suck. Instead of paying engineers to spend time innovating and improving their designs they paid harvard business assholes to micromanage workers and strategize how to shuffle vehicle plants around so that workers organizing for better treatment would be least likely to happen effectively.
The way I look at it (as a German car owner myself), you gotta be able to afford repairs, and you have to do maintenance. Too many people wait 10k miles to do an oil change and no car should be treated that way.
I totally agree. I've had my 2011 2.0 TDIe Audi A6 now for about 7 years. Never had major problems, though I specifically selected a diesel engine as the TFSI engines are crap. I also do pretty much all of.my own work so only pay for parts when something happens, which of course helps keep costs down.
If anyone is repairing or diagnosing your own vehicle in the WV group, make sure you get the VCDS software as it helps a ton! I got some cheap clone via eBay but it's worked just fine for many years for me.