I was JUST coming back here to edit based on the mirrors! HA!!! Thanks for the tips!!
Anyway, it still looks hot.
How much cheaper is the A4-S than an S4? And "how" mod friendly is it??

 

The sticker price on my car was 41k. It is pretty much loaded. The sticker on the S4's I was looking at was about 56k. The big difference is the lease payment though. My car is about 450 a month, where the S4 was about 750 a month.

As for mods, I have the APR exhaust, software, intake, and a test pipe. Claimed gains are about 80 horsepower and 110 lbs of torque at the crank.The car has a great amont of torque now. Way more fun to drive. The shop that installed my stuff, also has a GTI that they did. They did just the software and test pipe, and a new front mount, and picked up 60 whp and 100 wtq. Pretty impressive, so the car is very mod friendly. Also, VF Engineering and GIAC are working on a nice turbo upgrade. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Ara

 

I'll certainly be in touch with you in the future as my timeframe closes in. Sounds very friendly, though.

One question for now - Since I would CERTAINLY do the mods mentioned above (in some variety perhaps?), what does Audi think about modifying leased vehicles? Any problems at the dealership?

 

Wyatt -

It all depends on the dealership as far as mods go...

If you can make the stretch from the A4 ($40K-ish) to S4 ($50K-ish), it is well worth it. While the A4 is easily tuned (in 2.0T configuration), the S4 has tons of torque, big brakes already, etc. I would imagine resale on the S4 would be better, too. That said, "settling" for the A4 is no hardship.

 

looks awesome

 

Ya, if it makes financial sense, go for the S4. As for modding, one nice feature APR (and a few others) have is that you can switch back to your stock software if you take the car to the dealer. You can store multiple maps in the ECU and change them on the fly via the crusie control stock. You can have like a stock mode, valet mode, 91 oct, 100 oct, etc. You can also lock it out, so nobody can change software programs until you enter the code. Pretty cool, since the dealer cant detect software, which is probablty the biggest potential problem at a dealer.

 

There is way that the dealership can still see that your engine ECU has been Flash chipped with APR (or REVO). There is an internal flash counter and security access monitor in the ECU that shows how many times the ECU has been Flashed as well as how many times someone has gotten through the security firewall (this happens when you Flash program the ECU).
Every time your car is Flashed with either APR or REVO's software, the internal flash counter in the ECU is increased by a count of one, as well as it is noted that the security firewall has been breached.

This is important because every once in awhile the Audi/VW dealership will have software updates of their own for known drivability issues, so if you go into the dealer complaining that your car behaves a certain way, drives like so, etc, they might Flash your ECU with an updated version of factory software that might be known to cure the issue. Well, if you've been Flashed with APR or REVO, your internal Flash count would read higher than the factory number (for example, a flash count of 3, when there's only been 2 factory software updates). This would alert the dealer that someone else has Flashed the ECU.

GIAC is the only company I've heard whose Flashes are completely transparent---no matter how many times the ECU is Flashed, the internal flash counter won't increase and no red flags are raised that the security firewall has been breached.
Be careful.

 

I'll be leasing whichever I get for sure, so when the time comes up, I will get the numbers on both the 2.0T and the S4. Thanks for the input!