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What's the first step I can take to improving my S4's handling. Is it possible without lowering the height of the car?
Please keep the answer simple as I know very little!
Thanks

what do you want to improve about it? can you drive it to the limit around a track right now i.e. is the driver the limit or the car at present?

Handling is difficult to define - you can set a car up to oversteer or understeer at the limit, or be relatively neutral.

I do trackdays/sprints in my Elise and Im always experimenting with different damper/geometry/ARB settings...Im not sure what you can adjust on the S4 ..not much I guess with the standard set-up

The 'out of the box' handling on these cars is very safe, and the car is prone to understeer at the limit. This is case with most 4WD cars Ive driven.

What do you want to improve? If you want to make it go faster around corners then fit adjustable suspension, lower the ride height, stiffer springs, adjust the damping to suit, set a more agressive geo, and fit sticky tyres i.e. road legal trackday rubber like Yokohama A048s etc.

at a basic level to start with Id go for stiffer, lower springs and sticky tyres...be aware that the tyres may only last 5K miles though

it's worth noting that you don't _have_ to go lower to have a decent suspension setup.

Especially if you drive on bumpy roads, clearance is a good thing.

I agree- low ride height and even lower profile rubber may look cool, but it can make things much worse...race cars get away with as they run very high spring rates.

I wouldnt lower my S4 any more than 10-20mm....

Thanks for the info,
No, I don't want to lower the car at all as I live in the Swiss Alps and do need the clearance on the car. So what's the best way to improve handling without lowering or putting special tyres on. Stiffer springs,

Rollbars will sharpen things up.

Just replacing the dampers all round transformed my S4 (72k at the time) with Bilsteins. Retaining standard springs kept the cost down and comfort levels up.
Everyone has their own ideas about this, but I have done same thing with other cars previously and always been happy with the results.
At higher mileages the standard dampers are less effective anyway and ready for renewal.

OK - tell us what you think is wrong with the 'handling' - its a loose term....if you describe what the car does and what you want it to do then people can advise if its possible to remove that trait without major changes

Philip is right a set of antiroll bars is the best value upgrade. There's been a few recent posts on the H&R fat antiroll bar combo. Warn shocks may also cause a problem.

so you guys find that a stiffer ARB even with std suspension helps turn-in and reduce understeer?

What I hate is floating and wallowing [ like a ship] at high speeds and also crashing to the bump stops and/or bump steer. Bilstein dampers drastically improved this especially compared to std 72k [worn] items. They give good control on undulations without being too hard and then act very hard against a sudden bump. Anti-roll bars and the like can be added to fine tune turn-in etc. but for me I find the high speed floating more of a problem.

Std suspension is actually quite good, wallow and roll is down to ARB settings not dampers. I bought H+R C/O due to adjustability, not because STD stuff is way out of line. I'm currently running RS4 dampers all round an actually not a great improvement over std S4. For those on a budget buy ARB and forget dampers, struts and springs etc... IMHO.

The AWE Transmission Brace makes a world of difference to the cars driveability IMO. I think the car should have this from the factory.

yep - dampers only control the rate at which the springs move....its the springs job to hold the car up level. A Stiffer ARB will help if the std springs arnt doing their job...what you really want is stiffer springs, then dampers and fine tune with the ARB last (if you need to) ..if you are hitting the bump stops then the springs arent stiff enough to hold the car up or the dampers are too soft/combination thereof