Used Audi A4 II (B6 and B7, Type 8E): Cars like this are no longer born!

This Audi A4 still remembers the days when gearing was chosen for dynamics, not emissions, and when drivers wanted to hold the steering wheel, not a smartphone. There are still a few decent pieces, and if you calm down their rhythm of life, you will probably pass them on to your children.

The second generation of Audi A4 from 2000 to 2008, internally designated as 8E, is a bit confusing with its division. The designation B6 was adopted for the older variants produced until the fall of 2004, the later modernized ones with more diffuse headlights and the Singleframe front mask are B7. From a technical point of view, it is still the same car, although the modernization in the mid-term went quite deep, so the B7 versions already have, for example, a differently shaped front axle, more precise steering and a lighter body with a higher proportion of high-strength sheet metal. But also slightly more economical anti-corrosion protection, and it is much harder to find engines with cheap age – especially among six-cylinder engines.

There are enough parts, sometimes too many

Original parts are traditionally expensive, but this A4 already benefits from a sufficiently “lucrative” age, and especially close technical ties to other models (especially Passats B5), so secondary production covers the vast majority of common needs. Even in a higher-quality assembled car of a premium brand, you sometimes come across scraps with a limited lifespan – for example, bowden window winders start to wear out after fifteen years at the latest, regardless of whether you wind the windows often or not at all. It makes no sense to buy five times more expensive in the original, when a part for nine hundred from the e-shop will do the same service.

Elsewhere, you have to use common sense. It is difficult to get a front axle with eight aluminum arms with a set for four thousand crowns, it is good for passing from the service to the bazaar. Decent parts will cost at least 15,000 CZK, and with them you will at most have a third of the life of the originals for 40,000 CZK. You can really have these worries, even though the A4 chassis was able to handle 300,000 km without play in the pivots – if only the lighter four-cylinder rocked the front axle. But the average A4 has been driven a lot, and this raid will probably be over, with the 1.9 TDI-PD failures, possibly even in multiples.