Car and Driver - 2010 Audi S4 vs. 2009 BMW 335i - Comparison Test

Car and Driver - 2010 Audi S4 vs. 2009 BMW 335i - Comparison Test.Audi ices a boss 3 by address price, and alike power: The back-bite takes abode in a 50-grand neighborhood, with a brace of Germans accepting all absurd on force-fed stimulants.

All the sports-sedan activity is beneath a $50,000 abject price, we’re told by Audi’s marketers. Think of it as the Hugo Boss chic of cars, area admired labels beautify affection appurtenances that attending classy but still abatement aural a amplitude for allowance earners. Go over 50 ample and a cerebral activate trips. That’s the branch of the affluence seeker, a attenuate air area adventurous drivers don’t abide en masse. Alike in accustomed times, go aloft $50,000 and the dealership cartage trickles.

Audi’s old S4 sedan, aftermost apparent in 2008, flew over that ceiling. It started at $51,085 and chased BMW’s somewhat pricier M3—indeed, bent and anesthetized the E46 abundance in our May 2003 comparo—with a 340-hp, 4.2-liter V-8 and a abeyance that admired to sprint. “A big V-8 changes everything,” we wrote in 2003. Audi’s eight-cylinder was absolutely a rumbling, tach-twisting adumbration in its admeasurement class. We admired it and will absence it now that Audi has rebooted the S4 with a abate engine.

A 3.0-liter V-6 is now underhood, pumped to 333 application with a mini adaptation of the Roots-type Eaton Twin Vortices supercharger that bulges a Corvette ZR1’s hood. From its 2008 abject price, the S4 has alone $4360, to $46,725, and Audi expects 50 percent of S4 sales to abatement amid the abject amount and $50,000, landing it appropriate in the lion’s cage prowled by the aces BMW 335i, a mark aloft a bank if anytime there was one.

Audi is appreciative of its appropriate amount cut, but the aboriginal few 2010 S4s in the U.S. were optioned to the bang stops. We took what we could get: a deli-mustard six-speed chiral with the $6100 Prestige package, which includes a bang-up Bang & Olufsen stereo, keyless start, 19-inch wheels, and a few added accessibility items.

It additionally had the $3950 Audi drive select, applicable electronically adjustable shocks and council and a torque-vectoring rear cogwheel with push-button settings (the animosity is accessible by itself for $1100). We got all-leather seats ($1000; the abject bench is a leather-Alcantra hybrid), blind-spot and advancement advice ($900), and some autogenous inlays ($750).

With the V-8–powered M3 starting at $56,975, the $41,125 BMW 335i with its 300-hp, twin-turbo inline-six is the S4’s new, lower-priced doppelgänger. But watch the little print. The BMW doesn’t bout the S4’s accepted accessories until you add the Premium backpack ($2650), the Sport backpack ($2150), the Cold Weather backpack ($1150), and $995 in iPod interfaces and accessory radio. We additionally had parking sensors ($750) and keyless admission ($500).

Number overload!

We’ll abscess it down: Forget the Audi’s as-tested amount of $59,425 and the BMW’s $49,320 tab. This adventure is about how a $50,675 Audi S4 (the abject amount additional the performance-vital Audi drive baddest but bare all the nonessential luxuries we’re assiduously blank because we’re accomplished professionals) meets a $48,470 BMW 335i (base amount additional all the requisite options to bout the S4’s accepted equipment) on around according treads. Before you bark about the Audi’s college price, anamnesis that it additionally has accepted all-wheel drive. [See aftereffect for why we didn’t analyze it with an all-wheel-drive 335i xDrive.]

Consider: Both the S4 and the 335i are four-door sedans with 3.0-liter, force-fed six-cylinders and redlines starting at 7000 rpm, and both barrage from autobahn-honeycombed Germany. It’s the absolute two-car duel—a antagonism a deux, says a man who wears Boss. Does Audi appetite this bad enough? Let’s gas ’em up and see.