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Sometimes a car looks perfect on paper… until you drive it.
Maybe it was the one you couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel of, or one you ended up owning for a while. For whatever reason, it just didn’t live up to your expectations.
What was it, and why?
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For me, it was an Audi A4 B7 2.0 TDI that I bought not long after moving to Luxembourg.
I only kept it for about a year, but during that time it covered plenty of local driving, several longer trips around the region and one full journey to Lithuania. As a motorway cruiser, it was genuinely good: comfortable, stable and with enough diesel torque to make long distances effortless.
The disappointment came whenever the road became narrower and more technical. On smaller roads with sharp corners, it felt unbelievably nose-heavy. The steering would ask for a turn, but the front of the car seemed to pause and consider whether it really wanted to follow. It honestly felt as though an elephant was sitting directly on the front bumper.
There is, of course, the never-ending BMW-versus-Audi joke that one tries to throw you backwards into a hedge while the other prefers to continue straight into it — but this particular Audi seemed determined to prove the stereotype.
What made it stranger was that I had owned several A4s before, including B5 and B6 generations with 1.8 and 2.0 petrol engines in different specifications. None of them felt anything like this. I later rented a B9 A4 in Scotland and thought it was brilliant, so it was not simply a case of me disliking Audis or expecting them to behave like sports cars.
Not so surprisingly, the B7 actually felt more balanced with a fully loaded boot. With luggage in the back, it became noticeably less intimidating through corners and I had slightly more confidence that the front end would make it around the next bend.
It was particularly disappointing because I had been an Audi fan for many years. Audis were part of my family’s car history when I was growing up, and I continued that tradition when I started driving myself. The B7 2.0 TDI did many things well, but its handling on twisty roads remains one of the strangest driving experiences I have had.
Picture for reference only. I must have disliked that car so much, that I cannot find a single photo from when I owned it.
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