My friend has a 2001 S4, auto transmission, and loves the car, but has had constant problems with it. Reading the Audi forums online it seems that the S4s don't hold up very well at all. Now the problem is my friend can't decide if he should keep his S4 or go with something else. Anyone know of S4s that have made it to high milage (without tens of thousands in repairs)?

 

tens of thousands?

There are S4 owners who are over 100k miles. Just gotta take care of it. Warranty is a must also. But its not as bad as you make it sound.

 

My friend just got one, past warranty (I think 60,000 - 70,000 miles), already had to pay $5,000 for the torque converter, and still has problems with a maintenance required light that the dealer can't fix. This is only a couple months of driving it, then you figure the turbos will go in not too long, it gets pretty high pretty fast. The reason I thought so many had problems though was because if you read the audi forums they have a lot of complaints, makes our transmission problems seem like nothing.

They're nice cars, but who wants to buy a car then have it be in the shop all the time?

 

It's probably because the people driving it beat the shit out of it. I love that car, it's one of my all time favorites too!

 

Why would your friend's car need a torque converter? Surely Audi didn't make any S4s with an automatic, or did they?

 

Yes, S4's did have an auto as an option. The newer V8 S4's also have it as an option.

 

Yeah he has an auto, and the auto transmissions seem to not be as strong as the manual trans. If you get a chip for your audi it will actually add less HP than the manual, since the trans can't handle as much as power.