cheapa8

There is no right or wrong answer and no two circumstances are the same. However, a '99 3.7 QS with 170k books trade at £1500 and has a top forecourt retail price of £3000. Guide prices for A8's are not 100% reliable but even on a good day it isn't going to be worth more than £2500-£2750 in most circumstances. Last of the line 02 & 52 plate models with sub-100k mileages with all the toys in various specs (although many are 2.8QS - obviously the model Audi had a lot left over of!) are easily available for £4000 odd even from dealers.

Depending on which toys are on it, if you have a week or so overlap you can awap things like wheels etc. There have also been some horror stories on this forum of people putting new or recon heads on at the cost of £1000's, getting 5 miles down the road and discovering the block or crank had gone too.... Personally I'd prefer to just replace the whole engine if one could be found at sensible cost if it is to be repaired.

To be honest, on a '99 3.7 with 170k odd you need to do some serious back of an envelope calculations before spending serious money on it like half a new engine. You could easily replace the car with something newer and lower mileage for £4000 after haggling minus what you could get scrap for yours (maybe £1500?). Removing any emotional aspects and being hard headed about the issue it probably isn't worth spending £1000's on.

All the Audi CD & DVD Nav discs right up to the 2008 MMI one seem copyable with CloneCD. I wouldn't get too excited with any of the Nav system on the D2 - all of them are slow and generally ancient by comparison with a modern £100 TomTom. SatNav has come on a long way in the last few years. Even if it has the TV option it'll be useless in 18 months time in most of the country without an expensive digital upgrade. The very latest 2008 system on the A4/A6/A8 is still only just about as good as a TomTom x20-x40 series.

With main dealers for most marques going bust or closing almost daily they really can't afford to turn any work away. Haggle a bit then haggle again. They want your custom to keep the workshop busy.

I don't think the "rules" are any different to buying an old A8 than to any similar car be it is 7-Series, S-Class, Lexus etc. As long as you go into it with your eyes open and a realistic attitude you'll be OK. That pretty much means that a major failure of engine or gearbox on pretty much any D2 A8 you should probably scrap the car and simply buy another rather than try to fix it. Gearboxes are obviously the big issue here - but I've had an A8 which needed major engine work at 75k miles (a 4.2 40v which suddently begun drinking 1 litre of oil per 300 miles) and I've known others. If you can't afford to face that fact you should not buy old luxury cars. Most of what goes wrong has been covered and there is loads of info on the 'net. A slightly tatty or questionable A8 is simply not worth touching. The trade price for a mint 75k 2002/02 S8 4.2 is only £5500 with anything else worth less so don't pay 2k for a load of trouble. With current prices pre-facelifts are probably not worth the bother. The ideal car would probably be an X-reg example with a full (and documented) history which has low road tax. Mileage isn't as important as condition and how it has been looked after. They all like a drink - 4.2's around town are sub-20's so be sure you can live with the reality of that. People will tell you you can get 28 - indeed you can at a constant 70mph with no cold start. In the real world you don't. 2.8 FWD's do about 26-27mpg in mixed driving and can top 35mpg in the same conditions as above - they'll still only do low 20's with cold starts and traffic though. FWD models also, obviously, have less to go wrong, weigh 250Kg less (so the performance penatly is not as big as you'd think) and the gearboxes seem to last but lack the A8's "USP" of the security of 4wd and the pace of the V8's. Spec they are all similar but insist on parking sensors front and rear if you're going to use it in town. The double glazing/solar sunroof pack is nice but a bit of a gimmick IMO and once again means more weight and another thing to go wrong. Don't pay extra for the SatNav - it is hopeless by modern standards and anyone with any sense will use a TomTom instead (this applies to most factory system in my view). If you're looking at a Sport check you can live with the ride. It is pretty awful by most standards and I've known people get rid of A8's because of it. Also remember that the D2 A8 is a 14 year old design and cars have come a long way since 1994. Whilst it still does most things remarkably well in others it is inevitable that newer cars from lower classes have caught up a fair bit in many areas. Good luck.

Hi, Wonder if anyone who has ever fitted an aftermarket radio unit to an A8 could help me identify which cable is the +12v permanent supply for the radio back up? Car is a 2000 model with the non-Bose (i.e. amplified rear, non-amplified front) setup. The stereo, which has standard ISO connectors, is connected via what looks like a standard Autoleads ISO<>Audi A8 connector block and works fine expect it loses all its settings as there is no backup power. The connector block wires the (yellow) wire which should be the backup supply directly through pin to pin on the Audi conversion (i.e. assumes that the Audi supply has it in the same pin position as an ISO connector). Is this correct? Searching around behind the dash I found a second yellow wire (just hanging loose) which supplys 12v until the driver's door is open so isn't a lot of good. I suspect a car telephone has been fitted previously and removed which might have mean the wiring has been messed up but I might just be using the wrong wire. Failing that, is there a suitable permanently supplied +12v feed I could take from the relay box under the passenger footwell and run into the back of the radio? Thanks for any help,

Following on from the "6k A8" thread, there seems to be a considerable amount of confusion as to what the future costs of A8 road tax are going to be. As a point of reference I think they are as follows (anyone please correct me if I am wrong). Firstly, all D2 A8's have over 255g/km of CO2 so all fall into the same bracket (the top one!) so it is the same for all versions. The key difference is for cars registered before or after 1 March 2001. Basically, if your car is an X-reg or older you are not going to see significant increases. If it is Y-reg or newer you will. X-Reg or older cars will not be taxed on CO2 so will be in the same bracket as any car with an engine over 1.5 litres. This means that even in 2010 an annual tax disc will be £200. As for Y-reg or newer, up until this year only cars registered after March 2006 have been in the top bracket. The big change is that this top bracker is being applied back to any car after March 2001 for tax renewals from March 2009 with the exception of a 1st year "discount" to £300 for 2001-2006 cars in an attempt to reduce the size of the jump. Basically this means any Y-reg on D2 A8 will cost: This year: £210 per year From March 2009: £300 per year From March 2010: £455 per year For D3's the story is much the same for those registered before March 2006. Those registered after March 2006 will already be in the high band so see little change. Hope this is useful.

That is correct up until March 2009. From then any car registered after March 2001 will be based on Co2 and the 2001-2006 "limit" will be abolished. From next March any petrol A8 registered after March 2001 will be in the top band. However, just to confuse the issue slighly further in the first year of the changes (2009-2010) there is a slight "discount" to £300 for 2001-2006 cars. Basically, any post March 2001 D2 A8 will cost to tax: Tax purchased between March 2009 and February 2010: £300 per year Tax purchased between March 2010 and February 2011: £455 per year By comparison a pre-March 2001 example of the same car would cost £185 this year, £185 in 2009 and £200 in 2010.

Which would be clever as the R32 is a VR6 - not a V6 and designed very much for transverse installation!

If you shop around £6k should get you pretty much any D2 A8 you desire. The trade value of a 2002/02 last of the line S8 with about 85k is only just over £5k so you shoud be able to find one privately or from a keen dealer for £6k so work down to other models from there... 2.8 is absolutely fine for cruising around (in fact I have just bought one after two 4.2 QS's) and in FWD guise has the advantage of significantly better fuel consumption, 250Kg less weight, gearboxes which do not go pop and a few other "missing" A8 foibles such as leaking main rear seal. It does 90% of what an A8 does at about 60% of the costs. Other than that the world is your oyster. Anything Y-plate on will need to be cheap because of the tax. Just look for the usual things - full history, been looked after, everything works. In fact, the more I think about it the more I wouldn't spend £6k on a D2. £4k will get you a very nice example indeed and if spending £6k and not afraid of a few miles maybe look for a D3. As to the actual model, a pre-March 2001 A8 2.8 Sport will not feel much slower than the Pug (A 2-wheel drive A8 doesn't weight much more than the same year's Passat) and be by far the cheapest model to run. At the other end of the scale £5500-£6000 should get you a nice 70k ish 4.2 QS with all the toys from 2001-2002 era. 3.7's are cheaper still because they have the costs of the 4.2 but not the performace so are a little bit pointless in most buyer's minds.

If you look at CAP's figures D3 A8's have been dropping on average about 7% a month since May. From a dealer's point of view do you want a car losing that amount sitting in stock? Not really which is why they are reluctant to buy them. On the other hand, used values of some small cars are increasing month on month which says it all about the market. The same is true of the older A8's as well. I just got shot of my 4.2 QS where I suspect it will go to the great Audi garage in the sky and picked up a very good condition 2.8 for £2k from a guy who had paid £4k just 2 months ago! It'll be worth £2.50 in 6 months time but hey it can't lose more than £2k!

Traders are likely to offer you some pretty dismal amounts - don't be surprised of some offer in the £8000 range. It is just not the sort of car many want to buy in in the current climate. If they offer you a lot more as a px check what they are selling isn't horrendously overpriced. Try ebay with lots of very good pictures (try to use a 3rd party hosting site if possible), Pistonheads can be OK for this sort of car sometimes and of course Autotrader. Try £11995 if you're happy with that and see what happens. If you get no response lower it. Difficult to predict in the current market - you might get people fighting over it or not a sign of interest.

CAP put it at £9950 excluding any options. What you get for it probably depends on where you sell it.

Personally I'd avoid the 55w kits. I've seen all sorts of horrible things happen to ECU's and wiring on cars with some Xenons kits. On top of that, whilst any aftermarket kit is technically illegal in practice you will most likely get away with a 35w kit in a sensible colour a 55w kit is most definately illegal. Technically, the higher colour temperature you go the lower the light output. Once you get to 8000k you're probably approaching levels of light a decent Halogen bulb would give so are pretty much defeating the point of the kit as far as driving visibility is concerned. Anything in the 4300-6000k range with a good quality bulb (and they do vary) should give a good light output. Personally I'd choose 5000k as a sensible compromise.