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There are some car listings that just make me sad, and this S8 is one of them. I fear that I may be missing the bus on getting just the right S8, because while the prices continue the gentle depreciation slide they’ve been on over the past decade, that means that they’re ending up in less-than-careful hands. In many of the cars I’ve owned, I’ve wished that I was maybe one or two owners closer to the original sale, because I’ve spent so much effort trying to undo what the previous owner did or repair things they left undone. A simple oil leak can easily turn into a multi-thousand dollar repair in some cases if left unattended, and when you’re talking about an expensive, complicated car like the S8, there can be multitudes of possibilities for where you can run into trouble. But even excusing that mechanicals on a 12 year old car get old and need to be replaced, then there’s the physical wear – generally, the second and third owners of cars seem to care much less for their condition than the original owners did. Let’s take a look at the cost of ownership on this 2003 S8, and why I’m sad:
It is with a tinge of regret that I post nearly every S8, but especially the 2003 models. That’s because they’re one of my favorite cars, and with only 1,200 total examples imported to the U.S., they’re not exactly common. This is especially true when it came to the last year of the D2 S8; you had to select a no-cost “Limited Edition” package three special color combinations. The Brilliant Black is nice and Ming Blue is always pretty, but for my money no S8 matches the color combination of the third; the Avus Silver Pearl with Oxblood interior. Only 100 of these cars were made up and it feels as though I’ve let half of those slip through my hands:
The term “Fully Loaded” is often overused by dealers, and sometimes – as our reader Brad is fond of pointing out – poorly used. He is correct that, when talking about a top of the range luxury executive car, saying that it has power windows, locks or steering seems really quite superfluous since you couldn’t opt out of those options. Earlier this week, another reader sent me a 2001 S8 and I started to tick off the options that were selected as I looked through the photos and over the description. Unfortunately, the pricing on that particular S8 John sent was so aggressively low that someone got a great deal and it disappeared almost immediately. What was really amazing was that the selected options were more costly than the second-hand asking price! But I found another heavily equipped 2001 S8 for sale – unsurprisingly, though, the dealer doesn’t list those rare options, rather relying on the tried and true “Fully Loaded” moniker. Let’s see if we can decode what the car was selected with – and what that would have cost:
The D2 S8 is without a doubt one of my favorite cars, but even I’ll admit that the color pallet that the car was offered in was rather sedate. In fact, by 2003 you could only select from three colors. The typical silvers, dark blues, and blacks are all too common to see on the uncommon sporty large executive, but if you look at the specification sheets for the car you find that there were actually several colors that were very rare to see. Strangely, that’s not necessarily because they were ugly or very unusual colors – in fact, the example of today’s color was quite popular on other models like the Allroad. Yet, here is an Alpaka Beige S8 quattro – a color only available in 2002:
Over the years, we’ve gained a lot of fans here at GCFSB, some of whom are specialty dealerships focuses on the cars we know and love. One such dealer is Sun Valley Auto Club in Idaho, whose inventory is always chock full of interesting finds. Our reader, Max, over at Sun Valley Auto Club recently purchased a 2002 Audi S8 that we featured last year. He was kind enough to check in with us and share his enthusiasm for this Audi and his buying experience.
