Daily Podcast: Lieberman Grumpy About 333 Horsepower Audi S4
In fairness, Lieberman might say he’s not grumpy about the Audi S4 having only 333 horsepower, since the last generation S4 with the V8 cranked out 340 ponies. That’s a decrease dude, and in the car biz it’s nearly unheard of (unless you’re Acura, in which case it’s typical to botch successive generations of a model). So what gives? The new supercharged V6 has a little more torque than the outgoing V8, better fuel economy, and is a little lighter. But what’s really going on here, in this writer’s rarely humble opinion, is that Audi is repositioning the S4. Where it used to be a dead on competitor for the BMW M3, they’re pitching it now at the BMW 335i. The real Audi competition for the M3 is the RS4, which matches the M3’s insanely high-revving V8 and approximates the horsepower at 420. In the meantime, the S4 does what the 260 horsepower A4 3.2 can’t – go toe to toe with higher horsepower cars from the competition. The big question then is whether Audi will be able to price the S4 low enough to make it a viable BMW 335i/Infiniti G37 alternative. My gut says no, not gonna happen. The S4 will price itself out of the competition.
Immensely bored law student. I've also got 3 dogs.
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That reminds me, everybody has a big powerful engine and a less powerful one. Why? is the price difference really big? I do not think so. Infinity takes advantage of this. So does Cadillac.
Vento: you do know the G35 is equipped with a 6-speed right? Don't like NAV? Fine. Your G35 just dropped in price to $30K, an even better deal.
Yep the next time some politician (looking at you Hillary Clinton) wants to push a universal healthcare system think about European prices. A noble idea to provide healthcare to the poor and/or moochers but damn, how are we going to pay for it??? $8 gas with $5 of each gallon going to the gov't to pay for programs? HUGE income taxes? Lived in Europe and it was nice but I'm not yet ready to pay that much to live in America. Oh - this site is about cars??? OH - well I do indeed like that Audi. Beautiful. Wonder what the Passat equivalent will look like? I really don't need more than 200 HP though. Would rather have the gas mileage instead of the power. I really like GPS NAV too. Used it to visit Atlanta a month ago for the first time. I'll still with the NAV on my Nokia N810 handheld computer though. That way when the software is obsolete I can load something newer. Not like a dash NAV which sits there being useless.
ZCD2.7T - where will the ‘09 CTS-V fit in your breakdown? Performance-wise, price-wise? It seems to me that the initial numbers coming out on the CTS-V put all of those cars to shame on the fun-for-your-dollar scale." ------------------------------------------------ IF the interior looks and is executed better than a Cavalier, (the last generation's wasn't)AND if the refinement approaches that of the German cars' (ditto), THEN the CTS-V will be the deal of the century. Something (history) tells me that it won't turn out that way, exactly. All of that said, I have every intention of driving one to see for myself. BTW - why is it that nobody except Audi (OK, + Subaru and Mitsubishi) sees the benefit of offering AWD on their highest-performing cars? I'd make it optional, so that those who don't like to be able to mash the loud pedal with impunity could still do their power-slides, but for me, I'd take AWD any time for a street car....