The Z is a V6.

The power delivery is very very smooth, when I get back in the Octavia it feels like the Z is slow because you dont get the same sudden kick. A quick glance at the speedo soon confirms that the Nissan is the faster of the two though.

I'd never buy another turbo petrol car. The power edelivery of an NA engine is unbeatable.

I'd never buy another turbo petrol car. The power edelivery of an NA engine is unbeatable.

i allways prefer n/a engine for fast road applications because they require less skill from the driver and it is normally cheaper to do. besides the off boost perfomance and cruise economy of a n/a car is far superior to a turbocahrged car because the turbo'd one has a lower compression ratio.

if a n/a car has the right bits bolted on there's no reason why it cant produce the same amount of power as a turbo one.

Hi again

Much of the con is the "safety" aspect of 4WD. This is largely BS. Sure you can get the power on earlier in the corner, but if you are trying to negotiate the corner safely, you would not be applying much power round the corner anyway. Most VAG 4WD stuff understeers anyway, so not much safer than FWD.

You can also start to suffer for some of the sophistication with something like an Mitsi Evo. General idea is that to drift the car becomes easy and relies little on driver skill, just point it and press the go pedal and you are a rallying superhero. Trouble is all the technology in the world puts you right up to the limit of adhesion, but it cannot predict the surface changes, so should you run into an oily patch, you will be more inclined to come a cropper as you will be going that bit faster. A sales rep that used to visit me regularly got himself a Scorpio 4X4. He had been with is a couple of days and decided to throw it at a corner he knew well, at about twice the 30mph he usually did it, on the basis that 4x4 system gave him twice the grip. His 4x4 system might have helped him out of the field he ended up in, but as the car was now on its roof, it didnt:rofl:

For getting the car moving on snow and ice, 4WD does have some advantage, but the marketing hype tends to make out you somehow have more grip everywhere. Truth is that 4WD cars pull no more maximum cornering force than FWD or RWD equivalents. Sometimes the incresed unsprung mass actually compromises grip on poor (rough) surfaces by reducing wheel control. And remember it is all very well to be going well on the snow because you have a bit more traction, but you still have to corner and stop and here, 4WD makes no difference.

So although some will like 4WD because they live somewhere where mud and snow are relevant, they are IMO having to compromise on the driving experience to accomodate a few days a year.

I think that for most drivers, it comes down to what you want from your car. If you want to have an interactive and involving driving experience, RWD is still king. If you want to just go as fast as possible out of the corners 4WD can give you that, but at the expense of involvement. If you want it cheap and to not suffer the intrusion of a transmission tunnel in the pasenger cell, go FWD.

Having a car that can deploy all its power everywhere is really quite boring and kind of removes a major aspect of car control.

I just got back from a little drive to look at some tyres in the MR2. Where it was chucking it down with rain, I had to take care not to stuff it. Carefully consider lines, surfaces, cambers, how much power I could use and when. So my potentially boring little trip out was really quite absorbing.

Chris

Hi again

Much of the con is the "safety" aspect of 4WD. This is largely BS. Sure you can get the power on earlier in the corner' date=' but if you are trying to negotiate the corner safely, you would not be applying much power round the corner anyway. Most VAG 4WD stuff understeers anyway, so not much safer than FWD.

You can also start to suffer for some of the sophistication with something like an Mitsi Evo. General idea is that to drift the car becomes easy and relies little on driver skill, just point it and press the go pedal and you are a rallying superhero. Trouble is all the technology in the world puts you right up to the limit of adhesion, but it cannot predict the surface changes, so should you run into an oily patch, you will be more inclined to come a cropper as you will be going that bit faster. A sales rep that used to visit me regularly got himself a Scorpio 4X4. He had been with is a couple of days and decided to throw it at a corner he knew well, at about twice the 30mph he usually did it, on the basis that 4x4 system gave him twice the grip. His 4x4 system might have helped him out of the field he ended up in, but as the car was now on its roof, it didnt:rofl:

For getting the car moving on snow and ice, 4WD does have some advantage, but the marketing hype tends to make out you somehow have more grip everywhere. Truth is that 4WD cars pull no more maximum cornering force than FWD or RWD equivalents. Sometimes the incresed unsprung mass actually compromises grip on poor (rough) surfaces by reducing wheel control. And remember it is all very well to be going well on the snow because you have a bit more traction, but you still have to corner and stop and here, 4WD makes no difference.

So although some will like 4WD because they live somewhere where mud and snow are relevant, they are IMO having to compromise on the driving experience to accomodate a few days a year.

I think that for most drivers, it comes down to what you want from your car. If you want to have an interactive and involving driving experience, RWD is still king. If you want to just go as fast as possible out of the corners 4WD can give you that, but at the expense of involvement. If you want it cheap and to not suffer the intrusion of a transmission tunnel in the pasenger cell, go FWD.

Having a car that can deploy all its power everywhere is really quite boring and kind of removes a major aspect of car control.

I just got back from a little drive to look at some tyres in the MR2. Where it was chucking it down with rain, I had to take care not to stuff it. Carefully consider lines, surfaces, cambers, how much power I could use and when. So my potentially boring little trip out was really quite absorbing.

Chris[/quote']

yeah i agree with alot of that, but i have chosen quattro for grip and traction, it is night and day from my octy vRS and so far have notice very few downsides mpg slightly down. handling is much better but thats not to do with the 4wd, just susp and chassis.

on the not of transmission tunnel, my A4 hasnt got much bigger than what was in my octy to be fair

and so far i wouldnt change back to fwd out of choise of a similar car, if i was offered mine for

yeah i agree with alot of that, but i have chosen quattro for grip and traction, it is night and day from my octy vRS and so far have notice very few downsides mpg slightly down. handling is much better but thats not to do with the 4wd, just susp and chassis.

on the not of transmission tunnel, my A4 hasnt got much bigger than what was in my octy to be fair

and so far i wouldnt change back to fwd out of choise of a similar car, if i was offered mine for

....i had a A4 130bhp tdi quattro a few weeks ago, and it was fun for a while... leathering it around.. but after 5 minutes id got bored and it started to annoy me, as of course the extra weight, stupidly low gearing (100mph was over 3000rpm) and crap fuel economy.....

Try one in poor road conditions (which we usually get alot of in the UK) and you'll see the point. 4wd on wet roundabouts is alot of fun. Trying a low powered 4wd in the height of summer isn't going to highlight it's true strengths.

Responding to the original post - for the Knightsbridge Brigade having a quatro Badge on the back is probably more about image - and hence I guess a very clever and lucrative marketing edge for VAG. However don't knock it because inherently it was their philanthropy which funded the R&D which has allowed Skoda to offer us the best value 4x4 system available. I spend months each year driving on ice/snow covered roads in the Alps and would never buy a car without 4WD. It is frightening how often you see 2WD vehicles parked on their roofs in ditches in the winter. More often than not its RWD vehicles which struggle most - in two out of the last three years we have found BMWs parked on their side in front of the chalet having failed to make the bend. Compared with permanent 4WD systems the Skoda/Haldex solution is ideal giving extra grip when its needed without crippling fuel consumption. My old RS Sierra had a 2.9 engine which needed 3 full tanks to get to the Alps from the UK, whilst the Octavia needs only one fule stop because even with a roof box its a highly efficient motorway cruiser with ample power to overtake when needed and very surefooted when the going gets tough. Its just a shame it took Skoda UK so long to offer the Octavia Estate 4x4 with a Tdi engine.

Personally I think FWD is in general, 'better' for the most part, simply because it is by far the safest method due to the general lack of driving skills in the UK.

I think RWD is better however for more experienced drivers (and I dont know if i'd consider myself an 'experienced' driver or not although I have owned an impressive list of RWD cars), for those who know what they are doing its far more controlable than FWD.

4WD as we know it today is largely a mis-nomer as most 4WD cars aren't actually 4WD untill the car thinks its needed, hence you carry around all that extra weight for virtually no gain, 4WD can also be unpredictable on the limit, wheras a FWD will generaly understeer, and RWD will generaly oversteer (this is a generalisation obviously) the problem I've always found in 4WD cars (and I've owned a few as well) is that they seem predictable as they either understeer (modern cars) or drift sideways (older cars) untill they find grip again, which then launches you in the wrong direction as you turn into skid, you must be very quick to catch a 4WD snatching into the opposite direction.

These are just my findings, personally i'd rather drive a RWD for the fun, but i'd rather have a 4WD if I was doing drag strips, and I'd rather my mum drove a FWD unless it was snowing in which case 4WD!!

TBH the main advantage I have found with the quattro system is when you're turning from a side road onto a main road in the wet. Because you know you'll get traction when you floor it, you don't need to wait for such a big gap in the traffic. (compared to the old Octy vRS which had plenty of power but couldn't put it down onto the road fast enough).

well I've got the least powerfull car to have "4x4" in the VAG range and that the oct II oil burner. We only went "4x4" so we could tow our gypo wagen out of muddy campsites. The car does 48mpg and doesn't look like a "Chelsea Tractor" so it does what I need it to when I need it

My mum a few years ago bought a A3 1.9 TDI 130 Quattro, she loved it and even went as far as to say it was better than the 306 gti she had had a few years before which she said was the best car she had ever owned.

Anyway 18 months ago it was decided that it was time to change, she decided she liked the torque of the diesil, wanted 5 doors and liked the quattro, but at the time this wasnt avaliable. This resulted in the purchase of the 2.0 TDI 140, non quattro with the sport suspension.

I know from having driven my dads company1.9 TDI 110 golf that it suffers from cronic handeling and wheel spin if you push it a bit like it needs.

Then shortly after purchase of my mums new car they said she could have Quattro with her car. So a trip to the dealers resulted in an order for an identically speced car as before with just the quattro added.

The result here was that in the space of time it took her to drive the 15 miles home (this was just normal everyday driving on a reasonable march 1st), she said that it feels completly different, and was a vast improvement over the old car. It apparently feels much more sure footed.

My dad also has an original Audi quattro, and on several occassions i have been with him on good roads where it has been a bit damp, to absolutly perssisting it down, and we have overtaken cars going around corners, or caught cars that were in the distance, where road conditions allow of course.

So in short i cant fault the system and would have had a 4x4 vrs if they had made one.

If you drive much on snowy roads as we do here in Norway, 4WD is an huge improvment compared to RWD and FWD, so i REALY miss 4WD on my vRS. Octavia have haldex 2 system 90% FWD and 10% RWD and quattro 50/50, so i would prefer quattro system

If you drive much on snowy roads as we do here in Norway, 4WD is an huge improvment compared to RWD and FWD, so i REALY miss 4WD on my vRS. Octavia have haldex 2 system 90% FWD and 10% RWD and quattro 50/50, so i would prefer quattro system

There's a point - not all quattro is equal. IIRC the TT (for example) has the haldex system, along with the A3, I think you're looking at an A4 or possibly A6 to get the 50:50 power delivery in normal conditions.

Our octy with 4x4 (more or less same system) only has the 1.8T and its a bloody good car. So much safer.

There's a point - not all quattro is equal. IIRC the TT (for example) has the haldex system, along with the A3, I think you're looking at an A4 or possibly A6 to get the 50:50 power delivery in normal conditions.

Its confusing to ppl then Audi use the term Quattro to TT and A3 because it haldex and not real quattro, but the others is real quattro. I had an 2004mod A4 Quattro wich was 50/50

I remember JBS were offering 4wd conversions for cupra rs a while back, but i don't think they even got off the ground with it. LSDs were good enough i think.

I remember JBS were offering 4wd conversions for cupra rs a while back, but i don't think they even got off the ground with it. LSDs were good enough i think.

Thats because you could buy the Leon4 In spain with the 2.8 v6 and 4motion

Thats because you could buy the Leon4 In spain with the 2.8 v6 and 4motion

A golf V6 4m of S3 floorpan could be used just as easily, no need to import a car from Spain.

It's not something JBS offered as such more they were asked if they could do it, they said yes and estimated it would cost ITRO