If you are at ALL worried about reliability.

Go with the Allroad.


Seriously, unless you are an enthusiast who is willing to work on his own car, the S4 is NOT the car for you. Regardless of how much you may like the looks.

You WILL run into problems. It's an older car. And you DON'T want to pay someone else to fix it for you, when said problems arise. It's not a question of "if" it is a question of "when".


I spent around 14 hours changing the stock intercoolers to RS4 intercoolers, and various other maintenance..... At 100+ dollars an hour, you don't want anything to do with that.

the allroad has like the same motor and trans no? 2.7t I am sure the allroad is just as reliable/unreliable and as expensive to work on.

I think he should look into an IS300 personally. easier to work on cheaper parts and if he is looking for an enthusiast car the 2jz can be turbo's for a NA-T setup pretty cheap

Yeah it's the same motor, but although I haven't worked on it in that particular chassis, I've heard it is a little easier to wrench on in the C5 platform.

It still would suck. But it's the lesser of two evils he is picking from.

allroad + vagcom > **