2018 Audi S5 Prestige on 2040-cars

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2015 Audi A3 configurator is up and running

Potential customers for the new Audi A3 should set aside some time during their lunch breaks to head over and build their ideal example of the new sedan. The official configurator, complete with pricing and options, has gone live on the Audi website.
Customers can choose from three trim levels (Premium, Premium Plus and Prestige), while each trim can be had with either the Volkswagen Group's familiar 2.0-liter, turbocharged, 220-horsepower four-cylinder or a 1.8-liter, turbocharged, 170-horsepower four-cylinder. Buyers of the 2.0-liter will enjoy Quattro all-wheel drive while power for the 1.8T is channeled through the front wheels only. A six-speed, S-Tronic dual-clutch transmission is standard across the range.
You can check out full pricing on the A3 right here, but as a means of recap, the base Premium trim with the 1.8-liter engine starts at $29,900. A Premium Plus 1.8T starts $32,800 and the Prestige 1.8T will cost $38,700. Adding a 2.0-liter turbo and Quattro increases the price by $3,000, regardless of trim. Those prices don't include an $895 destination charge.

Audi RS3 Sedan coming to America with over 400 hp?

The Mercedes-Benz CLA45 AMG is a fast, competent car. It's significantly sharper than the Audi S3, and it should be, since its starting price is around $7,000 more. Still, getting walloped by the higher-performing CLA45 AMG must irk some people at Audi, we'd think, which might explain why there are rumors that the S3's big brother is coming to town. Yes, reports are popping up from an Audi of America employee that the Audi RS3 would transition from its Euro-market Sportback body style to a more conventional four-door, and that its styling would be updated in the process. Oh, and it'll have a 400-plus-horsepower, 2.5-liter, five-cylinder turbo with which to bash the four-cylinder AMG. The report comes from Quattro World by way of CarScoops, and goes on to claim that Audi hallmarks like Quattro all-wheel drive and a seven-speed S-Tronic dual-clutch transmission will both be present. The new RS3 Sedan would arrive on US shores in 2017 as a 2018 model, with prices starting between $55,000 and $60,000. That should make Mercedes-AMG very nervous – the CLA45 may start around $50,000, but getting it past the $60,000-range is simple (your author was driving a nearly $68,000 CLA45 just last month, for example). Naturally, we have a call in with Audi of America to see if there's any credence to this report. Stay tuned for updates. Related Video:

Junkyard Gem: Fully depreciated 2001 Audi A8 L 4.2 Quattro

A great big A8 with a long wheelbase and all-wheel-drive is just the thing for a serious player with an oligarch-grade bankroll and the need to get to important corporate meetings during the worst Colorado snowstorms, and we're betting that's how this 15-year-old A8 L's original owner saw it. The problem with cars like this is that big, complicated, expensive machinery tends to develop big, complicated, expensive problems once the aging process sets in, and third or fourth owners of high-end German luxury cars tend to lack the resources needed to keep those cars going. So, those S-Classes and 7-Series and A8s end up in a place like this when something expensive breaks at age 15. This one, which has a very straight body and decent interior, now sits in its final parking space, among the Daewoo Leganzas and Volvo 850s in the imports section of a Denver self-service yard. If you're good with the wrenches and have some Audi expertise, you can't beat the luxury-per-buck deal of a solid 10-to-15-year-old A8; the price for a runner tends to be about the same as that for a tattered Corolla of the same age. This car's base price was $69,946 in 2001, or just over 95 grand in inflation-adjusted 2016 bucks, and it's packed full of leading-edge engineering that's still fairly advanced today. Related Video: