Rare B7 RS4 Hits the Market With a New V8 Inside
One of 2000 copies for the U.S. market, 2008 RS4 has a new 4.2-liter V8 heart to move the corners, logged 98,000 total miles to date.
Between 2006 and 2008, Audi built 10,000 RS4s for the world. Out of that figure, just 2,000 arrived in the United States. To date, the B7-era RS4 was the last such machine to be sold in the U.S., as the current RS4 has yet to cross the Atlantic (if it ever does).
Thus, seeing an RS4 here is almost as rare as coming across an R8. However, one is currently on the auction block at Bring a Trailer.
This RS4 arrived in Silver Spring, Maryland wearing, fittingly enough, Avus Silver Pearl Effect. According to AudiZine, just 292 2007 and 2008 RS4s wore the color, taking third behind Daytona Gray and Phantom Black. From there, it moved around until landing at the selling dealer in Pennsylvania in February 2021. By then, though, it was in need of a heart transplant.
The old 4.2-liter FSI V8 just couldn’t put out the 420 horses it once had in its day. Thus, a fresh unit straight from Ingolstadt landed at Audi Lancaster in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who then successfully completed the transplant in March of 2021. Since then, the new unit contributed 200 miles to the 98,000 miles the Audi’s seen over the past 13 years. All those miles, of course, hit the corners through the six-speed manual, itself refreshed at around the same time.
Inside, no infotainment system is there to distract from the task at hand: handling the new 4.2-liter V8. That’s not to say the RS4 won’t take care of the occupants, though. The front Recaros come with enough heat to keep the driver and passenger warm while bringing the heat to the street. The rear seats, too, are heated, so no one’s frozen out of the high-performance excitement.
Among all the B7-era A4s rolling down the highway, only a few can hold a candle to the big power of the RS4. With its new heart, this one looks set to slip back into the background. Whomever gets blown away by this machine will have one hell of a story to tell.
Photos: Bring a Trailer
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