Audi gives you a great reason to save a couple thousand dollars and buy a map, and it’s called the Multi Media Interface (MMI). Order your A3 with the optional navigation system, and Audi will bundle your premium Bose stereo functions, among the most often used controls inside any vehicle, into the MMI. Then, each time you fire your A3’s ignition and want to listen to your stereo, you’ll be forced to check in with a squadron of lawyers to promise that you won’t be distracted by the MMI while driving. This is patently ridiculous, akin to asking a hormone-riddled teenage boy not to look at the Playboy magazine you just plopped into his lap. As anyone who has ever used MMI, or BMW’s iDrive, or the COMAND system from Mercedes-Benz knows, it is impossible not to become distracted by these ergonomic disasters while searching through menus for oft-used functions that used to be controlled by simple knobs and buttons located on the dashboard in the days before people decided expensive navigation systems were a better deal than a $5 map. Thus, the corporate safety disclaimer and your forced agreement not to sue if you miss that turn in the road trying to dial up the bass on the latest Ludacris track.

Bottom line, if you need a disclaimer, and you’ve gotta stuff the glove box full of CD changer in an age when in-dash disc changers are commonplace, then you’ve got a counterintuitive design that should not be placed inside any automobile. Lexus manages to offer the same level of feature content in a simple and logical manner. The wizards in Germany ought to take a look at that solution and copy it – immediately. That said, we hate the distraction MMI causes by simply scrolling through radio stations to find one we like, but admit that once you set your station preferences the spin dial on the steering wheel works OK. Mostly, we just turned our 2006 Audi A3’s stereo off and listened to the exhaust fart between the DSG’s gearshifts.

Surprise, surprise, programming the navigation system is easy enough, but a touch screen (like a Lexus) would be so much better than Audi’s MMI spin dial. The navigation system also offers interesting features like finding restaurants near a destination, destination routing with a stopover, seasonal road restriction notification, and the ability to find an address by telephone number. It proved difficult to reset the map’s orientation and view distance, but was easy to cancel navigation when desired.

The 2006 Audi A3’s ergonomic annoyances don’t stop with the MMI. The climate controls are mounted low on the dash, with ratcheting knobs for adjusting temperature. Annoying. There’s no “off” button for the climate control. Annoying. Our test car’s average fuel economy computer re-set itself every day. Annoying. Programmed destinations take over the center display of the gauge cluster and seemingly cannot be replaced by trip computer data unless the destination is reached or navigation canceled. Annoying. Audi replaced its brilliant twist knob sunroof control with a three-button setup in the A3. Annoying. The cruise control is completely obscured by the lower left steering wheel spoke. Annoying.