Originally Posted by UDel

Audi could have had a big hit with the A5 just because of its good looks but like most German brands they overpriced it and A5 never became a big seller because of its high price.

Originally Posted by mmarshall

Audi has traditionally had high labor and production costs. It got so bad that, a couple of years ago, they moved TT production from Germany to lower-priced Hungary. They have not been able to do that, though, with all of their models.

Originally Posted by rominl

yup, exactly my point (and yup, bmw and mb aren't much better neither). that's why starting price is as pointless as it gets these days. i always use similarly equipped prices for comparisons, to me that makes a lot more sense.

in this case, 32k for a bare-bone a5 2.0t, it's not even funny...

Originally Posted by Infra

Audi has the lowest margin between invoice and MSRP between MB, BMW and themselves, and they do not offer dealer holdback - making it very hard to negotiate as much as you could with a BMW or MB. I don't think you could ever negotiate a new A5 for $32k.

Originally Posted by UDel

Like most have said the A5 no matter what form is too expensive and too much of a premium over the A4 which it is heavily based on. Many people like the design of the A5 but when they see the price many say forget it, and often just get a BMW 3 series coupe or G37. Audi could have had a big hit with the A5 just because of its good looks but like most German brands they overpriced it and A5 never became a big seller because of its high price. I hardly ever see them where I see G37s and 3 series coupes everywhere. If a nicely equipped A5 could be had for a good deal less then the 3 series coupe and the same price or a little less then a G37 then people would not have been turned off from the price and it would have sold much better.

Sure you can get a base 4 cylinder A5 for in the mid 30's but it will be extremely hard to find and your going to end up with a very stripped down car with little in the way of features you come to expect from a car in that price range.

Imagine if when the Infiniti G35 coupe came out, they were priced in the 50's and even 60's for well equipped versions, mid to upper 40's for lower equipped models and then they offered a base 200hp 4 cylinder to get it into the mid 30's. It would have been a complete failure no matter how good looking it was. Instead of all the positive reviews it got reviewers would be focusing on how expensive and overpriced it was. Instead Infiniti was smart, knew the market and what they could away with and chose to price it pretty low to where it seemed like a great deal and buyers bought them in droves. I wish Audi would have done the same thing with the A5.