as jeff said, don’t buy it.
relaying what the audi mechanic told me: “early audi’s were notorious for having electrical problems” -my CEL was on all the time. i replaced parts and the light would still come on for the same problem. my car also started shutting off randomly when i would take it out of gear…another electrical problem.
from personal experience and trying to fix things on the car, it’s a huge PITA as nothing is layed out in an easy to reach area. if you plan on working on the car yourself, prepare to have a lot of free time to learn everything. i’ve ordered parts for acura’s before, but most of the parts that i ordered for the audi were 2 or 3 times as expensive as the acura. it’s not a cheap car to own and maintain.
when i was looking at the audi, i asked the exact same question on here that you did. i ended up not listening to people and went ahead and bought the car anyways. it’s was a huge mistake.
on the other hand, the audi/vw community was great. you’ll find that most people that drive audi/vw are hard core. another comment the mechanic said to me was that these people don’t care how many problems the car have, they will continue to fix them and drive them just because they love driving them. the car was great to drive…steering feel was good and it had a good ride. had i had a chance to put the quattro system to use i’m sure that would have been amazing as well.
if you’re going to ignore our comments, look into the specific year a4 you are going to buy and look for the problems. i forget what year a4 it was, but one of the earlier years they used a fuel system that wasn’t sufficient for the car. the fuel systems ended up crapping out and needing replaced.
check out Audi World and Audizine for lot’s of information on the cars.