RS4 Vs M3 Evo magazine

[Terry1948]

Hi all
I am not going to knock the new M3 because if it came that close to beating the RS4 it must be a verry good car. When I wanted to replace my M3 with another car I was looking at Porches however my wife put a stop to that and told me to buy a sensible car hence the RS4 which is the best sensible!!! car money can buy and in my case still better than the new M3. Thank goodness there are still people that prefer the M3 which I suspect will be a more common site on the road or off it !

[Adam]

[quote="b7sedan"]just read the review and aprt from the last sentence it seems to have most components ie, brakes steering engine etc of the rs4 ahead of the m3 leaving the final sentence saying that they had more fun in m3 but that it was personal preference. Given that evo had the last gen m3 cs (not csl) ahead of the rs4 in their last write up i am very glad that i didnt hold on for the new m3. What autocar and evo are saying is that the lst m3 cs was better than the new one!!
quote]

I am sure the new M3 is better in ever (real) way than the M3 CS for the same reason the RS4 beats both IMO.

We, the people who buy with our own money and run it for a few years, consider performance, handling, brakes of course but also styling, image (if you admit it), interior styling, quality etc

Magazine test drivers consider all of the above when they thrash a car around for 2 days and hand it back bald and steaming, but the deciding factor is generally how easy/controllable power oversteer is when traversing deserted North Welsh roads. This is useful only if you track or are down the pub.

I won't track my car, don't live in N Wales and won't be able to take those sort of liberties on a public road - so I know the RS4 would be far better for me than the M3 which itself would be far better than the old M3 CS.

The new M3 doesn't look very nice either and will look worse as a 4 door. And I hate the current BMW interior design.

[Mr.Sushi]

Well said Adam

[RS4_B7]

one week ago i was thinking to replace my RS4 with new M3 , but now ''after having a look on these tests'' the M3 is the farest car im thinking about and i love my RS4 more than before

Autocar said that the RS4 is faster than the M3 in straight line!! ''and i was SHOKED when i saw that'' , but the Q is why EVO didn't talk about these point

[sykotoy]

be like going side ways with a change from rs4 to m3 not much point

[kman]

i would take anythin autocrap say with a pinch of salt. dont make a decision until you've had a chance to test the car out ourself...

[DoctorD]

Autocar said that the RS4 is faster than the M3 in straight line!! ''and i was SHOKED when i saw that'' , but the Q is why EVO didn't talk about these point

Because the RS4 we compared with the M3 wasn't faster in a straight line.

Listen, I know how these discussions can become heated on forums and I have no interest in stirring up any emotions, but if you really want to understand the inside story from someone who is both reviewing and buying these cars, then feel free to ask.

[quattrokid1]

i think Audi has shot themselves in the foot.... discontinue the production of the UK spec saloon just as BMW launch the new M3!!! dont have a choice now unless you want a cabrio or an avant.

also think Audi management must be nuts not to have more than 1 RS on sale at any one time. If they want to sell 1.5 million cars per year, they will add a few more by having an RS version of each model as it comes on line or in the pipeline. The RS5 is due in the not to distant future oh and the RS6????

what happened to the RS3? and why no S3 sportback??

come on big cheeses... sort it out at the top.
BMW and Merc have an M or AMG version of most of their model line up, why not audi!!!!

[W8PMC]

Agree to a point, however the RS brand is not really an everyday persons car, as to date the RS4's have been the cheapest at around £50K so defo a premium brand & RS6's were over £60K. Also Audi tend to a point limit production numbers of the RS models, whereas BMW's M cars & Merc AMG's don't.

TBH, i think Audi play the game well, as they often get the jump & have an open market when launching, as the current RS4 has been the prefered car to the current M3 although not as many units sold & it's even seen as either slightly better or as good as the new M3.

The M5 has been around now for a couple of years & was seen as better than the RS6, but the new RS6 is only 9mths away yet BMW still have a couple of years left in M5 production, so again assuming the new RS6 is as good as it's expected, Audi will again take the lead.

I'm sure it's always a cat & mouse game & the winners are consumers who get some tasty motors to choose from & the manufacturers who get to create the hype. I do agree that it would be nice if Audi did have multiple RS models in production, but the trade-off would be the element of exclusivity that the RS brand has by limited supply etc. & that's something BMW & Merc don't have.

[mrdeli]

DrD - I still have a depsoit hanging in the air on an M3. Do you think the car will benefit from the new Dual Clutch Gearbox due next year - otherwise I think I will stick to my RS4 - i can't convince myself that the new M3 really looks the part (esp @ £54k) either inside or out. I loved my old E46 M3, but the new one, certainly in the reviews etc, doesn't seem quite so special as the old one did when it came out. I do love my RS4 though!

[mrdeli]

DrD - I still have a depsoit hanging in the air on an M3. Do you think the car will benefit from the new Dual Clutch Gearbox due next year - otherwise I think I will stick to my RS4 - i can't convince myself that the new M3 really looks the part (esp @ £54k) either inside or out. I loved my old E46 M3, but the new one, certainly in the reviews etc, doesn't seem quite so special as the old one did when it came out. I do love my RS4 though!

[DoctorD]

DrD - I still have a depsoit hanging in the air on an M3. Do you think the car will benefit from the new Dual Clutch Gearbox due next year - otherwise I think I will stick to my RS4 - i can't convince myself that the new M3 really looks the part (esp @ £54k) either inside or out. I loved my old E46 M3, but the new one, certainly in the reviews etc, doesn't seem quite so special as the old one did when it came out. I do love my RS4 though!

I drove the RS4 nearly 2000 miles in 4 days, so got acquainted pretty well and that's what led me to choose the Sports Seats, since if any seats can be comfortable that long then they're ok with me. I had not driven an RS4 before the test, so did not really know what to expect and after driving it down to Marbella I had already concluded that the M3 would need to be 'very' good to make any sort of impression on the RS4. In the end it did, but it was fascinating which aspects of the RS4 were better.

One of the key areas of the RS4 which was better than the M3 was the gearchange. The M3's has the usual BMW M-divisions' knotchy and arthritic feel and is really shown up quite badly by the RS4's, which as you know is very positive but also really easy and smooth. It's a pleasure to change gears in the RS4, whereas in the M3 there is little satisfaction. The DCT box will sort that I'm sure, so if you aready have an RS4 then I would wait for that.

I've discussed the pros and cons of each car we tested over on M3post, so would rather not repeat myself here, but perhaps I can point you in the direction of the key posts where I documented my thoughts. I could also post the copy that I wrote which was edited into the EVO article.

Now that I've driven an RS4 with SS+ I would like to re-compare the two cars, not because it would fundamentally change my mind, but it would narrow the gap slighlty. We drove both cars hard and fast and in our hands the M3 was the quicker (pulling away several car lengths on the autoroute), it was slightly more agile, braked just as well, sounded even better (considerably more so from the outside) and could carry more speed both into and out of corners.

Now perhaps a set-up change in the RS4 might have reduced some of its mid-corner understeer, but the roads were glassy smooth and covered in light dust and 'should' have favoured the RS4's better traction, but in fact it was the M3 that found more traction and carry more speed. Trust me when I say we tried ever trick in the book to get the RS4 through a corner and gain on the M3, but 'every' time the M3 pulled a few car lengths (regardless of which one of us was driving).

Both cars were very good and we concluded that either would be a good choice depending on which someone actually preferred. There were no real winners or losers. Yes, the M3 was the more entertaining dynamically but the RS4 was the better all-round car. But this was us being highly-analytical. On the road in the real world, they both offered very similar thrills. The M3 has a truly epic soundtrack and pulls even harder at the top-end than the RS4, so that would swing it for me, but by the very evidence that I am aiming to buy both shows how close but also how distinctive each of their characters actually is.

So I would stick with your RS4 until the DCT version of the M3 is out next year. The RS4 will still feel more special inside, although the M3 isn't bad, so it very much boils down to what you prefer at the time.

Hope that helps.

Steve

[Adam]

Steve

Firstly thanks for sticking you head above the parapet and giving us the story behind the story we all lap up in the magazines. I would be interested in your thoughts on my somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment:

"Magazine test drivers consider all of the above when they thrash a car around for 2 days and hand it back bald and steaming, but the deciding factor is generally how easy/controllable power oversteer is when traversing deserted North Welsh roads. This is useful only if you track or are down the pub."

Don't get me wrong, I understand why magazines like Autocar and Evo go to deserted roads in North Wales as it is the only place where you can drive on twisty challenging public roads and explore the limits of the car. This is the stuff which sells and which people (including me) want to read about as a) it is more exciting than a review on how good the satnav was when you were stuck on the M25, and b) it is something we are unlikely to do ourselves to the same degree.

What amuses me is the weight afforded on-the-limit-handling when deciding on a victor or ponts score, or even the concluding comments. Reviewers rarely discuss the pros/cons of actually living with the car during a couple of years of NORMAL use. I tend to take results with a large pinch of salt as a result, but it is amazing how many people on websites take these things at face value in a "my car is better because it got 4.5 stars and yours got 4" type way, even though most may never even see a track or experience handling characteristics which have determined the stars!

cheers
Adam

[DoctorD]

Hi Adam, I can describe how the car is assessed on these tests and it isn't balls-out and full-throttle all the time.

Just to give you a bit of background. I arrived at Marbella the night before the launch after taking 2 days to drive down through France and Spain. Richard Meaden and Andy Morgan then flew into Malaga on the Monday morning accompanied by the UK press team of BMW UK. They were driven over to the launch hotel in Malaga to collect the car. Meanwhile I had been driving around in the RS4 trying to stir up the BMW staff, but none of them took the bait (shame!). I parked a few hundred yards up the road, and Richard and Andy met me a few minutes after picking up the M3. We then drove both cars up into the hills towards Ronda, after a short-ish 30 mile drive on the autopista. Initially we drive around just taking it easy, whilst Andy looks for the best photographic backdrops and whilst doing so Richard was gradually sliding the M3 around and picking up speed.

Below is one of the videos I took whilst driving the RS4 (with the camera on a mount) as we had 'just' picked up the M3 and were heading into the hills..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W48MxrkreMc

It wasn't until later that we really started to drive the cars harder.

Here are a few more that I took..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reagMLECFNg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHgTDj5sBVk

As you can see, we weren't driving full-chat all the time.

Personally I test quite a few cars and adopt a similar approach to most testers, namely to drive slowly and get a good feel for the car then explore its limits and see how it behaves and what we can learn about they way it has been designed. Hopefully at the end, we then need to just live with it for a few hours/days and picture how it would be to own.

My role (usually) is to provide this perspective since I'm just like most folk on here, a car enthusiast who might go out with their own money and buy one of these cars. Proper paid journalists can become a little jaded and detatched since (a) they are unlikely to buy the cars and (b) they drive nice cars all the time without having to face the real experience of running them (running a press car isn't really the same).

I've been doing this for around 18 years or so, having been in the right place at the right time when most of today's experienced journos were starting out. Consequently I am fortunate enough to be invited along to provide my perspective, and try and share what other enthusiasts out there are thinking.

Next week we bring together all the greatest M-cars and assess where the E92 M3 sits within this hierarchy, but we'd also like to bring together the M3 with the RS4 (and C63) on UK roads to see how they really fare in more regular use.

You learn a lot about a car by exceeding its limits, but also by just travelling in it for several hours. My deep respect of the RS4 came from spending 2 days solid driving it - you learn a lot about a car when you get beyond the thrills and just live with it.

For example, after a knackering 10 hour drive through Spain having found little to eat on the route down, I finally found a Carrefour supermarket in Malaga. When I came back to the car there were 4 or 5 spanish youths admiring the RS4 (which I really didn't expect) and they were keen for me to get in and start her up. This I did and after selecting Sport mode, I floored it out of the supermarket car park. They cheered and clapped! I'd never have realised how much visual appeal the RS4 had without this encounter and that's why in the EVO article we say "During our time with the two cars it's the Audi that attracts the most attention".

So hopefully that answers your question and tells you that we are trying to assess as many aspects of the ownership experience as we can, although that's sometimes hard when you've got a photographer throwing a hissy-fit about the height of the sun...

[W8PMC]

Steve, many many thanks for the write-ups. I doubt you'll find anyone on here argue with your findings & certainly to me they seem very balanced.

I do always have issue when a performance road car is all of a sudden slated for not being outstanding on a race track & vice versa. In an ideal world we'd all have a Conti GT for Cruising, an RS4/M3 for blatting around to the shops & back roads at the weekend & an Atom for some track fun, but that's 3 sets of running costs & a whole heap of cash, so finding a car that's very good at all 3, but obviously not best in class for any of the three, is a great comprimise & shows just how good Audi RS & BMW M are at their respective jobs.

I'm dying to see/drive & hear more about the new C63, as by all accounts it will be the 1st AMG that's not only quick in a straight line, but can handle corners & stop, which is something AMG have not been great at to date (straight line speed they've been masters of for a long time now). Any idea when the 1st C63 tests will be appearing?? Also any insider info on the RS6?? & RS5??