Best Dashboard Vents in Recorded History - 2015 Audi A3 Long-Term Road Test

Edmunds.comEdmunds.com Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 10,316
edited January 2015 in Audi
imageBest Dashboard Vents in Recorded History - 2015 Audi A3 Long-Term Road Test

This update to Edmunds' long-term 2015 Audi A3 includes details on the car's dashboard vents. Sounds boring, right? It's not. Trust us on this. This is Hemingway on cars.

Read the full story here


Comments

  • allthingshondaallthingshonda Member Posts: 878
    Also, they look like they belong in an airplane.

    Because the design was copied from Boeing. Nothing wrong with benchmarking a great design though.
  • bolotiboloti Member Posts: 47
    I think CLA has very similar vents.
  • bc1960bc1960 Member Posts: 171
    These are nice, but I am still partial to the motorized swinging vanes in '80s and early '90s Mazda 626s.
  • quadricyclequadricycle Member Posts: 827
    bc1960 said:

    These are nice, but I am still partial to the motorized swinging vanes in '80s and early '90s Mazda 626s.

    Yeah, when they worked. Other than that I always did like that feature.

  • mercedesfanmercedesfan Member Posts: 365
    I agree that these work extremely well, but I would never call them the "best ever". They just feel so cheap. Audi builds exquisite interiors, but the air vents are one of the obvious areas that the A3 is the "cheap" Audi. The plasti-chrome ring feels flimsy and loosely attached to the dashboard while the plastic on the air vents themselves has a hollow feel to it. None of that would be any big issue for most cars, but the air vents are the ONLY point of visual interest in the sea of plastic that is the A3's dashboard. You just want to reach out and touch them, but they aren't very rewarding to touch.
  • bc1960bc1960 Member Posts: 171
    @quadricycle, two 626s, 12 years (as I've mentioned elsewhere, second one was prematurely terminated by a high-speed red light runner), never had a problem with the vents.
  • darexdarex Member Posts: 187
    MINI Coopers have always had this sort of vent design.
  • veedubber86veedubber86 Member Posts: 57
    bc1960 said:

    @quadricycle, two 626s, 12 years (as I've mentioned elsewhere, second one was prematurely terminated by a high-speed red light runner), never had a problem with the vents.

    I had one back in high school and college. It was a one owner car, but in 130k miles, mine never broke and were always a conversation starter when someone new got in the car!
  • chol92594chol92594 Member Posts: 208
    My friend's mom has a 626 and I taught her daughter how to drive stick on it. Gotta say, I was impressed with the swinging vents. It's a small detail, but it's useful. If I recall, her vents were completely functional too.

    Concerning the A3, it does have a nice vent design. My grandma and I went to look at an A3 cabriolet and Q3 (she's got an A4 cabrio and is thinking about trading it in) and I was really impressed with the vents. Sure, it's a small detail, but I've been in a few cars where the vents don't adjust to quite the right angle that I'd prefer. Being able to pivot the vents freely eliminates this problem and sort of makes you wonder why all manufacturers don't design their vents this way.
  • ek900ek900 Member Posts: 39
    Both the A3 and CLA lose me with the cheap and intrusive screen "growing" on top of the center console. Vents aside, those things just lose me.
  • allthingshondaallthingshonda Member Posts: 878
    ek900 said:

    Both the A3 and CLA lose me with the cheap and intrusive screen "growing" on top of the center console. Vents aside, those things just lose me.

    The CLA has a cheap add on looking screen. The A3's screen retracts into the dash when not in use.

Sign In or Register to comment.