I may be facing a car dilemma soon - applied for a job that would require a 96 mile round trip commute, with that in mind i'd be looking at either:-
2. Selling the R and the A1 privately, getting a new S3 (if facelift is due) for the wife to commute in and me to use at the weekend, and a crapbox (likely a 5 year old Vauxhall Astra diesel) for me to run up the commute miles in.
What do you mean if facelift is due? The S3 has been revised in the last month. You seem to get slight more standard equipment now than before but you still need to pay for the Tech pack if you want the virtual cockpit. The facelifted sportback looks very nice
The facelift was news to me - the configurator has been buggered for weeks - finally got a go on it last night. Slightly more standard kit - good! No Sepang Blue option that I could do on the configurator - bad! The sports seats don't seem to look quite as sporty as I remember them - or is that just my memory? Extra 10ps -good! Nice standard wheels - Good! Big acceleration and quoted mpg differences between manual and the new DSG box, makes DSG more tempting but would still probably bore me to have one.
Tempted.
My final choice was a straight one between the S3 and the R and so that is where focused my final finding of the details to make the final decision.
Joined the Audi forum and did some due diligence with the S3 owners and the final analysis was that the S3 maybe has a slightly more upmarket interior but the R is by far the better car to drive particularly in race as the though you would suspect the set up under the exteriors would be the same, they are in fact different when it comes to steering and set up.
Simply put the R gives you more pleasure than the S3 to drive. (reviews seem to back up this opinion to)
This is now my personal opinion and not gleamed from others, but having done the dealer trawl the S3 only really grabbed me in 3 door, the sport back no matter how hard tried to love, did nothing for me at all. So as 5 door is a must have and as the MK 7 is arguably better if not equal in looks to a 3 doors lines, the R was a clear winner.
Mine is lease and though there is more standard options, to create my R specification actually priced me out of being able to have an S3 and I would have had to go back to near standard to be able to select the S3. So it was the the more costly too, for less. Not sure how that translates to deals that can make with dealers but again cost made the R a clear winner for me.
As always we talking finite details on cars that are more than decent and you would be more than happy with either, but as you have to choose these are sort of details that make the difference in the end.
