I’ve thought about moving onto an RS for a couple years now, but the timing never quite worked out to do so. I recently had a guy approach me about selling my S4 to him, so I decided to check out the RS market again and stumbled across this car:
http://www.audizine.com/gallery/data/500/medium/IMG_04722.JPG
Purchased it within about a week of initial contact and drove it 500 miles back to Boston from VA this past Friday. It’s 2008 Black on black TI package with 54k miles, a transferable 3rd party warranty for another 3 years, new brakes and tires. It was fairly well maintained from a mechanical standpoint, but the exterior needs some work (respray of the rear quarter panel and possibly a paint correction later on). I’m planning to do basically all the maintenance I can think of within the next few months (change all fluids, plugs, filters, CC, etc.). Then I’ll get started on a few performance mods (exhaust, tune, spacers). Possibly a JHM SC further down the road, but that won’t be for at least a year.
I have to say, it’s a much bigger difference than I expected from driving my S4 to the RS. The handling, braking, feel and power delivery are all much improved. My S4 feels like it had more low end torque than the RS, but definitely didn’t deliver the confident feel and smooth power delivery of the RS.
I have to give a big shout-out to JimmyBones for doing the PPI for me. I got extremely lucky with him being local to the seller. Not only did he thoroughly inspect every aspect of the car, he provided me with some realistic feedback of its strengths and weaknesses which allowed me to be confident enough to buy a plane ticket down there to pick it up. I highly doubt I would’ve been able to make this purchase without him. Thanks Jimmy!