The silver eagle has landed! Today I collected Akoya from DS Motorsport in Coventry and drove home to Axminster - first impressions are that this car looks good for one that’s covered half of its actual mileage of 190,000!
I’m over the moon with how good the chromed pepper pots look against the silver paint to my eyes and the interior is very nice, albeit the alcantara part of the front seats are rather worn ( not too bad, just not up to my standards), so this will need sorting in future.
Off to fill up and then straight onto the M6/M42/M5 and then the final 20 miles on A roads. Not surprisingly the two cars - both remapped six speed TDI90 ATLs - drive very similarly overall. The biggest difference is in the two different gearboxes and specifically 3rd gear: in Audrey, 30mph is 1800 RPM which is perfect for my driving style in urban areas; you can drop down or accelerate around this speed as traffic conditions dictate and you’re always in the right gear. The same speed in the same gear in Akoya is 2000 RPM - an engine speed which sounds a little busy to my ears and makes you want to exceed the speed limit by a few MPH and change up into 4th, although even then the revs drop to between 1500 - 1600, which then feels a little too low.
Other differences noted were:
- Akoya’s engine vibrates the whole car noticeably more than Audrey’s at tickover. What could be the cause?
- The new Michelins on this car produce noticeably less road roar than the 4-5 year old Dunlop’s on Audrey
- I like the A1 steering wheel, feels nice in the hand
- I struggled to get comfortable for a while with Akoya’s seats, they seem harder to sit on / in somehow - that may be because the lumbar support function has been powered to maximum and then hasn’t been connected when installed as part of the swap with the heated non lumbar swing sports leathers the car originally had in
@PaulA2's ownership - which didn’t have lumbar and hence the wiring is not there. Incidentally I note that the climate panel, although in perfect nick, is not a heated one, so this has been swapped at the same time as the seats.
- The headlamps need adjusting upwards, they’ve been converted to HID (something that I’m told is technically illegal) and I can see they’d be very powerful when pointing further than 20 feet in front of the car on dipped beam.
- I like the rear parking sensors! Useful as rear vision in the A2 isn’t great and when parking in the dark when I got home they helped a lot.
- the RNS stereo with Nav is wasted on me, I’m happy with Audrey’s Concert and my phone’s googlemaps app! Both cars are equipped with Bose.
- I do not like the earlier style of cruise control fitted to Akoya, the later type that Audrey has is much more intuitive to use. Can anyone explain how to use it properly beyond just getting to the speed you want and engaging it (I.e. temporarily slowing down / speeding up using the stalk)?
- I cant wait to try the rear cup holder I’ve bought out as this was dearly missed when I bought a bottle of water too big for the dash holders when fueling up! I can then have a go at tidying this up by removing the scratched soft touch finish paint with meths - Akoya’s handbrake surround needs the same treatment too.
- The wiper on Akoya is noticeably slower than Audrey; I wonder if a new earth is needed?
As an additional note, driving Akoya has confirmed my suspicion there is something amiss with Audrey’s gear change - specifically moving the lever fore and aft is stiff (but not side to side which is fine), as Akoya is much more pleasant to change gear in. Does anyone have an idea how to go about fixing this?
As I parked up, I noticed a journey average of 58.5mpg showing on DIS which is exactly what I’d expect from Audrey - albeit in the case of the latter DIS under reads by about 10-12%.
Tomorrow I’ll have a good rummage through everything that’s filling the boot and back seat from the purchase, I know Craig threw in some spares but I’m not sure what!
Overall - Looking forward to having my own A2 that I don’t have to share going forward, although I will be getting Audrey back in 3 months time and I then have to choose one and sell the other!