[s-cars] urRS4 vs RS4...

[CaptMagu at aol.com]

s-heads

Did I mention that I got to drive he new RS4? I was leaving our church this 
evening in downtown Golden, when who should I run into but Frank Amoroso. He 
was, of course, driving the new RS4. We pulled over to talk shop when he made me 
an offer I just couldn't refuse. "You wanna drive it?" he says. "OK" says I, 
and I offer him a drive in my car. We jump in the cars and head north out of 
Golden on Hwy 93. Now this does happen to be one of the MOST heavily patrolled 
roads in all of Colorado but we're both packin V1s so we are able to play a 
little ;>)

Basically, I was very disappointed in the new one. The interior did smell 
absolutely wonderful and the seats were very nice and the lights are neat with a 
complicated and good sounding audio system but the rest of the car was 
disappointing. It felt rather disconnected from the driver. The transmission 
was notchy and I was never very confident which gear I was in. My Apikol 
short shift kit CRB tranny feels oh so much better. The brakes were not linear at 
all. You pushed down with not much happening and then all of a sudden it 
started to decelerate. My car is very linear and my brake pedal is nice and high 
which makes for excellent heel and toeing. Frank even mentioned that this was 
the best urS4/6 he's ever felt. The suspension wasn't even close but this is a 
stock vehicle. My car turned in much better and cornered far better. Suspension 
tuning will close the gap with little problem.

And then there is the issue of the GO pedal. The performance was very 
unimpressive. Now we are at a mile high and it was a balmy 88 degree evening in 
Golden but those 425 hp were just lacking in effort. I'd put it better than an E-46 
M3 and on par with the E-39 M5. My car is still limited to 12 lbs of boost 
and is making near 400 hp ATW and Frank's statement was that you just can't beat 
forced induction at altitude. The off the line feel of the new car is very 
good but even with just 12 lbs I could smoke that car anytime or anywhere. It 
wouldn't even be very close. I really didn't get to hear the engine on the new 
one because Frank was on the throttle really heavy with my car and my car is 
just plain nasty sounding from the 3 1/2" turbo-back exhaust to the mushroom air 
cleaner at the turbo inlet to the HKS Type II Racing BOV. My car is just a 
cacophony of nasty WRC type noises.

After 13 years and 171,000 miles of service my car is a little shabby 
compared to a new $77,000 vehicle.   But, driving them both the old girl feels much 
tighter and much more in tune with the driver. I don't think that with any 
amount of reasonable tuning you could get that new RS4 to come close to my car in 
any performance category at sea level or at altitude. That's all for now. 
Maybe Frank will chime in with his observations.

Hap, wit dakine real RS4 not from Evahboost, Maguire