It’s so cool and so rare that I don’t want it anymore!

Even stock, that 2.7T is a lovely engine to drive: gobs of torque right across the rev band. The S4 was a special car, and there are still days I miss driving it.

Nothing about them is reliable.  These were some of the darkest days for VAG where they turned out nothing but overly complicated unreliable shit.  

Reliable at being unreliable. 

Pulling the string on your tip, we also find

he said luxury! you heard him! 

The difference is the Acura is built by Honda - they’re a little less prone to designing things that are ridiculously complex compared to the Germans. 

What’s the reliability on Audis of this era?

250HP out of something

Take out the “re” part in reliability.

170,000 miles on the clock

It’s so cool and so rare that I don’t want it anymore!

I was an Audi Service Advisor and didn’t see too many of these, but he ones I saw required a lot of work. Make sure the coolant pipe on the firewall side of the engine isn’t leaking, because if it is, it could mean $2k or more depending on how severely corroded the fittings are and how much of the piping and hoses…

This is a very cool and rare Audi that needs a bit of love!

Case in point: many enthusiasts, myself included, don’t buy new. We buy old used cars, or we buy the newer cars just off lease, because we know that that’s where you get the better deal ( Jalopnik has done articles dissuading people from buying new). So if we are all clamoring for manual transmissions, but none of us…

The majority of NEW cars in Europe do still have a manual. The market share of automatic gearboxes is climbing though, very rapidly. The objective slushbox downsides that were still prevalent until only a few years ago have been solved now, except for price.

I don’t understand this logic. I coast in neutral all the time. Especially if I see a yellow light ahead.

If I have to change brake pads every 50,000 miles it cost me a fraction of a cent per mile, so I’m absolutely fine with “my money going to dust”.

This is the strangest argument I’ve ever read. 

Because it’s hip and trendy to blame America for everything you don’t like.

Americans like to think Europeans still only drive manuals. This hasn’t been true for some time now.

I’m somewhat confused about why you’re specifically calling out Americans, when Audi said that the take rate is 5% WORLDWIDE. In actuality, manuals only dominate the European market in the low end, economy segment, and even then, that is changing . In other segments, the US market actually has a HIGHER manual adoption…