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<OKI8J 8I< 8 JK@E> IMAGE RATING
I’VE just received a text message from a bunch of lying, crooked low-lifes.
These vile thieves promise that robbing me blind won’t cost me a penny.
Look, I know I’m stupid, but even I’m not that dim-witted. At the end of their text, sent out like a fishing line into a void, I’m asked to text “stop” to do what they call “opt out”.
That, of course, would be the worst thing I could do. For starters I never opted in, and replying would just confirm that they’ve sent their message to a real person with a real phone number and a real bank account.
For God’s sake, never, ever, reply to a message like this. Just send it to that great big dustbin in the sky.
Things seem to have reached the stage where everything is a fake and nothing can be trusted, not even the food we eat.
Even ingredients labels can’t be trusted. Content that says “total calories 100” are followed, in tiny letters, by “per 200g”, which is when you realise you’ve bought an 800g bag of crap that will blow you up faster than a nuclear meltdown.
Nobody, it seems, is capable of honesty these days.
Remember the advertising slogan: “If only everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen?” Well, VW blew that out the water with cars that broke down as often as a teenage girl at a One Direction concert.
It followed up with lies about emissions. But these days the firm is supposed to be going straight, so you can trust your VWs, Audis, Skodas and Seats to be whiter than, er, white.
Mind you, having said that, the new Audi A3 I’ve just been testing came in the only colour you could get from Mr Ford in 1910. That’s right. It was black, REAR MIRROR MONSTER: Usual Audi thug’s front of a grille makes it look like it’s being driven by somebody in a massive hurry. This time it’s a mum going to the hair salon. Twin exhaust, lights that thrust into the boot and a bumper that, for once, isn’t a monstrous piece of plastic, leave it looking gorgeous. Sat-nav, cruise control, twin zone climate control, and guess what? It was an extra and it cost £550. Still, it didn’t half look nice. It may have come with a piddling (by Audi’s standards) £4,423-worth of extra kit but, its gorgeous eight-spoke alloys were standard.
So was its interior, with high-grade cloth seats, soft-touch trim, knurled silver-finished instruments, a mix of light and dark grey, black and a sprinkling of leather. It feels posh from the moment you open the doors, with trip computer, heated electric mirrors, auto lights and wipers, DAB CD-stereo with steering wheel controls, twin USB and SD card readers. No parking sensors. That’ll be £425, sir. TASTY TOUCHES: Rear door pockets are perfect for a bottle of wine. FAST OR LAST: Fast enough for Britain’s camera-covered roads. WONGA WONDER: Beautiful car that will keep its value. WOULD AN ESSEX GIRL LIKE IT? Totally perfect for trendy Tracey, who would feel like the queen she thinks she is. their brushed aluminium inlays. Which were a £250 extra.
The A3’s electric dashboard can be changed to make the speedo and rev counter smaller to allow a huge footwide information screen to appear.
You can even have a bird’s eye satnav screen, showing the fields and houses around you. And it was a £1,395 extra.
One thing that wasn’t an extra was the engine. Audi sent me a 1.4-litre TFSI (that’s turbo fuel stratified injection, if you were wondering) with 150hp which, while not turning the A3 into some kind of lunatic road rocket, gives it the extra power that snobby Audi owners will expect as standard.
It’s certainly no slouch, especially between 30mph and 70mph, while it’s got the handling to match its speed.
It’s also got another acronym in its title – CoD – which stands for Cylinder on Demand rather than Cash on Delivery. It cuts out two of its four cylinders when not needed while making the car far more fuel efficient.
OK, I didn’t get near Audi’s claimed 59mpg average, but it did 41mpg without even trying. The ride isn’t as spectacularly smooth as its looks suggest. At times it can be bouncy, but maybe I expected too much of a car based on the VW Golf.
Thing is, the A3 is such a pretty car, inside and out, you don’t really feel like hammering it. That’s it from me. The A3 is pretty on the outside and inside, the performance is pretty good and I’m pretty fed up with getting begging letters from rip-off merchants.
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