Re: S4 vs. V8

[Eliot Lim <eliot@u.washington.edu>]

On Sun, 20 Nov 1994, Ernest Wong wrote:

> [from Ljubisa Stevano]

> >S4 is a _heavy_ car (3800-3900 lb) and it feels like one. 

that might be a tad pessimistic.. i have performance car quoting 3440
pounds for euro trim.. let's say we add 200 pounds of US bound
luxo-crap and you have around 3640 pounds.

>It should be
> >possible to get better performance out of pre-91 TQ sedan (5000 or 200) by
> >increasing boost, changing to a smaller turbo for low-end torque and
> >upgrading suspension. Brakes should be OK, discs are same size in both
> >5000/200 andd S4.

straight line performance yes.  in the curves, the s4's extra
structural stiffness together with suspension tuned to take full
advantage of it will devour any of the 5000/100/200/v8 cars.  one
doesn't buy the s4 solely for straight line performance.  the car is
much more than that.

> Question: How heavy is the 5000/200 TQ. My lowly 87 5000S non T, non Q has
> a factory dry weight of 2850 lbs. Before stereo mods.
> Seems like pumping in IA mods into a 3000lbs ish vehicle would be a nice idea.

the 200q 10v is listed as 3197 lbs minus luxo crap.  the 200q 20v is
around the 3400-3500 range i think (in US trim) and not all the
increase is due to luxo-junk.  there are the infamous internal caliper
brakes but more significantly there are structural reinforcements to
the 5000 body which started life with lightness being the top design
priority.

i think that the original fwd non turbo 100/5000 had wonderful purity
and balance of design and elegant engineering (it was the car that
propelled aerodynamic shapes, remember?) but did not hold out too well
to later "upgrades" such as quattro drive and a v8 engine.  this is
not to say that those were bad cars, just that it was nowhere as close
a perfect match as it was in the original.

the current body style i think integrated the needs of the evolved
models (i.e. s4tq, v6, s4-v8, quattro, quattro-slush, s4-slush etc
etc) much better with a small weight increase.  unfortunately some of
the original hard hitting ideals were also abandoned in favor of a
more mainstream sales. e.g. no more 5 banger, servotronic...

to answer your original question, i don't think that a high powered,
lightweight 5000 cstq would be an altogether satisfying proposition.
my main concern would be the lack of structural stiffness in a body
which was never really optimized for ultra high performance.  i fear
that there would be a pony-car type feel to it, if not the tire
burning theatrics.  but then again, i would be happy to be proven
wrong.  if i were to soup up a 10v turbo q, i would invest the money
in structural improvements.


eliot