Spent the longest (stupidest) amount of time yesterday trying to work out exactly what ADS and/or sports diff, and entertainment options my S4 has got on it. This wasn't helped by the fact I didn't take any interior shots on my test drive so I was having to do it all from memory, comparing what buttons and knobs I'd remembered seeing, with forum posts describing the options, and looking at photos on car review/sales sites, or videos on YouTube.
Ideally I'd have driven to the dealers to take a look, but thanks to me making a fantastic lunch for the family 'Keith Floyd' style I'd been over the legal limit from about 11:30am onwards. I could have rung him up but I wasn't going to be barking instructions down the phone along the lines of, 'On the climate control cluster, does the middle button along the bottom row say 'SETUP' or 'AC'?'
The overarching issue is that Audi sell their cars with a ridiculous list of options, even for a high-end model like the S4 where you'd think a lot of stuff would just be standard, and the list changes year to year. Compounding this is that the 2009/2010 model year saw them fundamentally revamp their MMI (MultiMedia Interface) from second-gen to third-gen. (You definitely want third gen.)
ADS is Audi Drive Select and was a £2500 option (!), and apparently you really want this. It has four settings, COMFORT, DYNAMIC, AUTO or INDIVIDUAL. They're kind of as you'd expect and by all accounts COMFORT is really good when you're ferrying people around and not at all interested in pressing on, it's also better on fuel in this mode. DYNAMIC is where you want it when driving properly, AUTO where you want it to adapt to how you're driving at the time although apparently is more just like a midpoint between COMFORT and DYNAMIC, and INDIVIDUAL allows you to tweak the variables manually.
http://www.audiforum.ca/3-0l-supercharg ... post184898I know it has ADS because I definitely remembered seeing the buttons for this under the multimedia interface in the dash, unfortunately there's no way to tell if it has the sports diff or not just from looking at it, this will be an extra option available through the ADS settings on the screen, or getting it up on a ramp and looking to see if it has the sports diff module on the rear axle. The sports diff is supposed to be fantastic, and tries to give the car more of an oversteer feel as opposed to understeer, which is reckoned to be the main problem with these big Audis - so yes I'd be happy if it has the diff, but for the way I drive 99% of the time it's not the end of the world.
https://youtu.be/2mcmvkBkVeg << Here is Chris Harris trying to get an S4 Avant fitted with the sports diff to oversteer. (Spoiler - he manages it.)
The ADS + sports diff came in at about £4000, so the sports diff was an extra £1500 on top of the ADS.
CONCLUSION - I definitely have ADS. Confirmation on sports diff will have to wait until I have the car.
As for the entertainment/MMI situation, I think I got there in the end. I definitely have MMI which is Multimedia Interface, but was shocked to discover that MMI wasn't standard on a car that started at £37K! The giveaway for MMI is the cluster of controls and little knob thing behind the gear lever, there are loads of S4s on Autotrader where this isn't present at all, and instead they just have one of the standard Audi head unit arrangements (called stuff like Chorus or Symphony).
I then had to try and work out if I have MMI 2G or 3G (second or third gen, nothing to do with phones!). They switched over in 2009 but there's a bit of confusion around build dates and model years, so whilst I think my car is the right side of the switch and will have 3G, I couldn't be 100% certain so did a lot more detective work.
Given what I knew for sure about my car I eventually concluded that I have MMI 3G + NAV, (this took me fucking hours, the number of variants is fucking ridiculous), but I can't be 100% sure if it's NAV HIGH or NAV LOW. NAV HIGH added Nvidia graphics (!) for proper 3D sat nav style graphics, where as NAV LOW was a more traditional style of nav graphics.
The real big thing on MMI 3G for me is that 3G supports SDHC cards in the SD slots up to 32GB per card (it has two slots), whereas MMI 2G was capped at SD cards so could only read up to 2GB per card, which is shit. (Apparently there are some 4GB Transcend cards that work in this.)
In the pictures below you can see an S4 that doesn't have MMI at all (or ADS), you can see one that has MMI but no ADS (the green arrow points to where the ADS buttons are on mine), and also one that doesn't have MMI but does have ADS (the green circle is where the ADS buttons are). Finally there's one that has MMI and ADS, which is the same as mine, you can see the extra ADS buttons under the multimedia interface.
CONCLUSION - 99.9% sure I have MMI 3G + DVD + NAV, jury is still out on NAV HIGH or NAV LOW.
OVERALL - Mine is very nicely specced, having had a proper dig around on Autotrader yesterday there are an awful lot of S4s on there that are missing all sorts of options that mine has on it. I'd put the list price on mine with the options at £43-44K or thereabouts, from a base spec cost of £37K.
Also, price-wise I seem to have done very well too. Obviously I did some research beforehand to check the price mine was being sold at was reasonable, but I hadn't realised there was such a raft of options to factor in as well, which makes the price on mine pretty damn good overall.
Rather looking forward to collecting it now, hopefully tomorrow but could be Tuesday. Depends on when the tyres turn up and how quickly he can turn all the paperwork around.
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