From S1 to R8 – four used Audis to make winter driving fun
Quattro is a byword for year-round usability and happily, all of Audi’s very best performance cars come so-equipped. Here are four used stars to buy this winter
It would be easy to say that winter is coming, looking out the window to a flurry of flakes falling from the sky. As it stands, an ‘arctic blast’ is only a temporary state of cold slushiness, even as December looms. It is cold, wet, dark and miserable though – conditions that’ll have you tucking your 911 GT3 or Lotus Elise away for winter. You don’t have to resign yourself to a dull daily for six months, though. There are plenty of compelling performance cars, that are almost at their best when grip and the will to venture out are at a premium, none more so than from Audi.
Audi made its name flinging its Quattro and its innovative four-wheel drive system at the sprawling stages of the World Rally Championship, the revolutionary coupe dissecting them with a proficiency that left rivals floundering. It’s one of the great night-and-day moments in motorsport. And on the road for so many years, Audi was the dominant proprietor of performance road cars with four driven wheels, at least from outside Japan and until BMW and Mercedes got with the program over the last decade. So if you’re looking for something that’s fast and capable no matter the conditions you’re set to face over the next six months, it’s a good port of call. Here are four fantastic fast Audis for the Autumn and Winter months.
Audi S1
From £10,000
The arrival of the Audi S1 in 2014 put fun fast Audis within reach of a lot more people. It was pricey certainly – £24,000 was Golf GTI money at the time – but its talents were appreciable enough to earn it an invite to eCoty that year. The S1 was a bit of a skunkworks special, only willed into existence by the need to cover the bills of the extensive work it took to create the 333-off Audi A1 Quattro.
That work included changing the A1’s rear end from a torsion beam to a multi-link set-up to accommodate a differential and driveshafts. You can’t have an S-badged Audi without four-wheel drive after all and it’s certainly useful for translating 228bhp and 273lb ft into fuss-free forward motion. The S1 was decent fun too, agile and chuckable if not infinitely throttle adjustable. Its damping was good if not perfect and it was exclusively available with a manual transmission, as a DSG wouldn’t fit.
As a winter runaround now an S1 looks like a right laugh, for as little as £10,000. The nicest examples will be getting up beyond £15,000 up to £20,000 mind. At the lower end of the price range you’ll want to make sure your chosen car has a thermostat replacement in its recent history, maybe some transmission work and of course, a full good MOT and full service history inclusive of diff oil changes.
Audi RS4 (B7)
From £25,000
Near the top of the list of the best Audis of recent memory is the B7 Audi RS4, if 20 years ago counts as recent memory… It was the first fast Audi with a four-wheel drive system that could genuinely send more than half the engine’s power to the rear wheels. It had Lamborghini-spec brakes and dynamic ride control adaptive suspension. The best bit? The engine – a 4.2-litre DOHC V8 with Audi’s FSI fuel injection tech, producing 414bhp at a heady 7800rpm. The RS4 was this engine’s first home before it was made truly famous in dry-sumped form in the first V8 Audi R8.
The complete package was a balanced, compliant, enjoyable super saloon of a type Audi had not yet made and that made Mercedes and BMW really quite nervous. Though BMW would have been well into the development of the E9X by the time of the B7 RS4’s arrival in 2005, it must have assured them the high-revving V8 path was the right one.
RS4s can be tricky to own. Those dampers are diagonally hydraulically linked so if one’s leaking, they probably all need to be replaced. The engine too is a delicate thing, with timing chains positioned against the bulkhead, meaning it’s engine-out if they need to be replaced. A good RS4 is a wonderful thing, though expensive – £25,000 is now the minimal price of entry for a car worth owning, even with over 60,000 miles on the odometer. If that sounds expensive, think of it another way: a winter of running a B7 RS4 certainly won’t cost you in depreciation, if you don’t put 20,000 miles on it at least.
Audi RS6 Performance (C7)
From £30k
If depreciation is less of a worry, just about any other fast Audi estate is back on the table. Thankfully in the case of many C7 Audi RS6s, the bulk of their initial value has already vanished. But in this 4-litre V8 super estate, you get supercar power and a surprisingly capable Autobahn busting blunderbus, that with the reins fully off, can top 200mph. This was an RS6 beyond the point and squirt monsters of old that weren’t up to much beyond inhaling stretches of straight road. It was relatively agile, composed, with Audi’s sport differential enlivening the tail end helping to keep the nose from washing.
Our interest in particular is in the RS6 Performance that arrived around 2016, which upped the power from its twin-turbo V8 to 597bhp and dropped the 0-62mph time down to 3.7sec – for a 2 ton estate… We’d also look towards the hydraulically-connected dynamic ride control suspension with dampers and springs, rather than the air springs that came as standard, for the most dynamic RS6 configuration.
Of course big fast cars come with big expensive bills. First and foremost your chosen example should have a nice, fresh set of tyres on it – 245/285 front and rear items on a Performance are serious cash to replace. Likewise the brakes, which on Dynamic Plus pack cars will be of the £11k ceramic variety. If your chosen car has the dynamic ride control dampers, check none are leaking. Like the RS4, if one’s bad, the lot probably need to be replaced and that’s not a cheap bill to foot. You’ll want bombproof service history too, preferably from a dealer or with a notable Audi specialist. Otherwise they’re generally sturdy cars if looked after – nicely put together inside with lots of Piech-spec clicky buttons and soft surfaces. The perfect winter warbler.
Audi R8 V10 Plus
From £50k
A supercar? In winter? Absolutely. In fact, this Audi of all on this list might actually be even better suited to the trials and tribulations of the darkest, saltiest months of the year (there’s a clue). The R8’s aluminium construction and bodywork means it’s much less susceptible to tinworm than its steel siblings.
The Audi R8 is also famously a benchmark for livability and usability in the supercar world. Even the original, so long as you get either a manual, or the facelift with a dual-clutch transmission. It’s also not as expensive as you’d fear, with first-generation V10 Plus examples (the very best original R8 save for an early manual V8) available from £50,000. For context, a brand new RS3 costs over £60,000.
For that you’ll get one of the sweetest supercars, with one of the best-loved internal combustion engines of the modern era, Audi’s (and Lamborghini's) 5.2-litre V10. The V10 Plus is proper supercar fast, with 542bhp, covering 0-62mph in 3.5sec on the way to a 197mph top speed. It’s also sports car nimble, tractable, balanced and controlled when you’re giving it the business on a proper road, then easy and unintimidating on the way home and in day-to-day driving. They’re even quite practical, with a big boot and good visibility all round.
Downsides? Supercars are famously a bit more expensive to look after. The R8 takes some exception given the variety of dealers and specialists that can work on them, but putting the engine in the middle, and one with this many cylinders at that, comes with unavoidable costs in terms of labour and parts. If looked after these are dependable supercars. If the timing chains need work its engine-out and the differentials in the rear-biased four-wheel drive system can be sensitive, especially to uneven tyre wear or mismatched rubber. Otherwise, it’s a second-hand supercar for all seasons and occasions.
