coming from a RS4 owner it's an honor and feels to good to hear.

 

Stay away from 04 models. Many had engine and tranny problems. My first one had a bad valve (very common) and it's replacement had a bad tranny.

Do your research as there were a significant number of replaced engines and trans.

 

As the king said, no 04's...potential bad news, and for the price difference between the 04/05's, it's not worth it to buy the 04's.

Jeremy

 

any known problems for 2005.5?

 

I had an 05.5 for over a year and 10K+ miles and I had zero problems. I drove it cross-country, during a snowy winter, etc. It was a great car.

 

I got to test-drive one yesterday and liked it's sportyness alot better than the S8, which I felt was more luxury than sport. On the test lot there was an RS4 sitting right next to the car I drove, and you could see that they really didn't do enough to the S4 to make it look agressive. Probably half-way between where it is and where the RS4 is would have been nice. Inside was much better than outside with great seats and the typical Audi well-done interior. i found the steering great, the ride firm and occassionally jarring and the engine seemed to have plenty of grunt. The transmission was also good but occassionally took a misstep, as all automatics do. I'm certainly going to consider this car as my DD but this dealer's pricing wasn't doing me any favors, even though they said it's a few grand off MSRP. On a 10K per, 3-year lease with taxes and fees up front ~ $4500 & $930 per month. A nice enough car but not even close to worth that kind of $ IMO.

 

Keep shopping - you should be able to find great deals on S4s right now. The only thing I can think of would be weak residuals driving those leases up. If you consider buying it, you might do better - I bought my RS4 for invoice, so I'm sure a dealer with some '07s lingering will do likewise for an S4.

 

I considered buying an 07 S4 Tip a few months back. I was all but sold on the tip, but on my last test-drive, the car really started getting jerky on me, almost like it couldn't decide what gear it wanted to be in. It spooked me to the point that I passed on the car.

Never was sure if it was just a problem with that car, or if all of them were like that, but I then decided to look at used manual S4s instead, and forgot all about it.

The resale on these suckers drop pretty quick.. I was seeing 06s with less than 20K miles for right around $40K (almost $15K less than the new 07!).