Lately I'm having a strong desire for the new gen Audi S3.
Compact, luxurious, decent mpg, AWD, sub 5 sec 0-60 with the DSG gearbox.
I was thinking lease, add intake/tune, beat on it for a few years and return? Other than most here hating leasing a car, why is this crazy?
Not much recent experience with Audi/VW, but wouldn't lease payments be ridiculously high on a car like that? Will Audi even lease this car? Looked at the new Golf R instead?
mattmacklind wrote: Not much recent experience with Audi/VW, but wouldn't lease payments be ridiculously high on a car like that? Will Audi even lease this car? Looked at the new Golf R instead?
Lease payments are typically much cheaper than outright purchase payments.
When I go to my local site and click "models for lease" their S3 pops up, I would need to call and confirm of course.
Do it, come back and post pics :)
You know, I've been having similar thoughts about an M235i.
But then there's this:
Ecoboost - same weight, same horsepower as the M235i but 11K less money, enough so that I could buy it rather than leasing and have even lower monthly payments. An attractive alternative.
jstein77 wrote: You know, I've been having similar thoughts about an M235i. But then there's this:
Hard to argue with that
Audi?
The S3 looks to be an awesome ride. The new Golf R is the exact same car but as a hatchback and cheaper. Not as nice of an interior, but another good choice and more utilitarian.
^Yeah, but I'm a pretentious prick. I'd like saying I'm driving an Audi better than a Golf.
jstein77 wrote: You know, I've been having similar thoughts about an M235i. But then there's this:
If I purchased another Mustang, it would be a V8. Period.
Apparently the APR stuff (intake/tune) is good for 80hp and 110 lb-ft of torques.
I'd think that would get the car down in the 4.0 sec 0-60 in a sleeper of a car.
I haven't driven the S3, but I got a brand new loaner A3 from the Audi dealer when my S4 was in for some service a few months ago, and I pretty much hated it.
It wasn't the power. Sure, the 2.0T was a lot slower than my 4.2 V8, but it was adequate power for the car. The throttle was extremely non-linear, the first 10-20% of the travel did absolutely nothing, and then it immediately jumped up, which made it very hard to drive smoothly. The S3 might fix this, I dunno. The brakes were also stupidly grabby in the way that a lot of German cars are these days.
IIRC, the S3 is DSG-only, no manuals. I really want to like the DSG transmission, but I found it annoying in the loaner. The only control that loaner had was to push the shifter forward and back, and they have the direction wrong. Car magazine reviewers often complain about this (back should be upshift, forward downshift), and I'd always dismissed that complaint figuring it's really just arbitrary and you just need to learn it. I was wrong, it really is hugely non-intuitive to have to push it away to upshift. I think the S3 might add steering wheel buttons, but in other cars I've found those to be non-intuitive as well because they're not always in the same place. IMHO it needs paddles that are on the steering column and don't rotate with the wheel.
Theoretically it ought to be possible to remap the shifter direction in software, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do it.
There's something wrong with how the mirrors are mounted, they're too far back in the chassis or something, because the field of view is too narrow. Also, the front doors are too short for me -- I'm about 6' tall, and with my seat in a comfortable position I couldn't rest my arm on the open window without bumping my elbow into the B-pillar.
I'm generally not a fan of the transverse-mount Haldex system used in the A3/S3, for vehicle dynamics reasons. It behaves too much like a FWD car, IMHO.
Other complaints are probably things that the S3 would fix -- the loaner had a stripper, option-free MMI/screen system, which sucked, and the seats were terribly uncomfortable (I think the S3 gets Recaros?)
I'm an Audi fan, I've owned one as my DD for the last 14 years in a row (a B5 S4 and a B6 S4), but I really didn't like that A3.
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