Thanks for all the feedback, it's been a rollercoaster as it's become apparent that if I want to change my A4 I need to do it *now* before the value potentially drops and then I'm kinda stuck with a lot of negative equity.
(As an aside
@a1dmo1, I'm so glad I went PCP this time, I nearly did go down the contract hire route, but my PCP is £303/mth with £1000 down - for £166 I'd just keep the car personally!)
I didn't really get that much of a test drive if I'm honest for a couple of reasons - I was out of the country and arranged to be home on the last day of Sept (ideally to get a good deal since it was the end of Quarter3!) and the only one available was the exact car I was proposing to buy, and so we only really did a test drive of a few miles on roads I'm not really familar with and not that representative of the way I drive - there's no way they could have let me keep it overnight as it was unregistered etc. Also, with the salesman sitting next to you it's hard to take the time to properly assess it. I think as well I was 'wowed' by the interior and the smoothness of the drive that I didn't critically assess the engine/handling properly. Part of the problem is that I had an A4 two cars back (a 2013 B8 A4 S-Line Black Edition 2.0 TDI) and assumed it would be similar enough.
Just to clarify on one of my points, the 1.4 TFSI is *not* underpowered, if you drive it the way it wants to be driven it is very powerful, but it's clear (and I let my friend drive it today to confirm - slightly biased though as he owns an Audi RS3!) that the engine is tuned heavily for torque and geared to favour the lower gears (and doesn't seem to have much to give above 3500 RPM) - but it's clearly not tuned for efficiency as 35-38MPG is the most I can get out of it in realistic and semi-gentle driving, which is disappointing as the whole point of choosing a small petrol engine is for economy (also surprising is the £110 road tax). It annoys me to get only 35-38MPG driving a 1.4TFSI gently when I got 28-29MPG driving my Audi S3 like a lunatic.
I've just been an idiot and made assumptions about the efficiency and drivability of the car without verifying properly on an extended test drive.
The salesman at Audi is looking at potential alternatives, they've plenty of S-Line diesels in stock but the 2.0 TFSI is trickier to get hold of apparently. To be honest, coming from a long line of Audi cars, this time I put sensible hat on and swore only to buy something that was reasonably cheap to buy and cheap to run which is why at the time I was also considering the Skoda Fabia (I don't *need* a big car, I just like the A4). Does anyone know if the steering rack will be different in the S-line model? The one in the Sport trim seems really long
The main thing I will say to potential buyers of the 1.4 TFSI is to really take time to assess how the car handles, how the engine performs (try it in slow moving start/stop traffic as well as normal traffic) and check the fuel economy.