I’ve been looking at S8 D3’s for months now. I’ve always been into high performance luxury sedans, and I find the 5.2 S8 to be absolutely hilarious and so amazingly awesome at the same time.

Recently, I found an ad for a cheap S8 with around 95k miles. I know the car is almost 20 years old now and isn’t a very financially rational decision, but I feel like numbers are shrinking and the window is closing to ****** one up. Should I stay away? Should I ****** one before it’s too late?

If I do decide to buy it, what are some imminent and down-the-road costs should I be expecting? I take it that the engine and transmission are robust, but there should be tons of wear and tear given the car’s age. I’m not planning on daily-ing the car, but I do want to keep it in a mint condition for weekend drives. Are these cars much difficult to work on yourself?

 

So, I recently got a really good deal on a beautiful D3 S8 and grabbed it. I've owned a lot of cars from STis and Evos to M3s and M5s. I also had a D4 S8 a few years ago pre-Covid that I enjoyed but I've never been a huge fan of the D4 styling and also my family hated how cramped the back seat and how tiny the trunk was despite being a full-size luxury car (still don't understand how that works).

The previous owner of mine only had it about 3000 miles before the front of the engine blew apart because it sucked an intake manifold flap. He spent probably about $40k meticulously rebuilding it (I have at least $25k in receipts) and even improving some of the known issue areas to make sure that it would be bulletproof. The overall condition of the car was fantastic despite having 120k miles, only a couple worn buttons. His price was CRAZY reasonable (I still feel like we didn't pay enough!) and I thought it was a scam or something at first since he had it listed for over 30 weeks, but he was just being VERY picky about who he even showed the car to, we were the first ones who he "approved" to even come look. I went to look at it and immediately fell in love.

There are a few small issues I'm tracking down (some kind of air leak is triggering a "too lean at idle" CEL) but nothing dealbreaking or that I can't figure out on my own (I've always done most of the wrenching on my own cars). From what I'm finding, outside of a few trouble areas (S8 specific engine parts, taillights apparently are made from solid gold, etc) parts are relatively easy and inexpensive to get since they're largely shared across the whole D3 series (and sometimes ALL period Audis) and even the facelift was only minor changes (that can even mostly be retrofitted to pre-facelift models).

The D3 S8 is quickly becoming one of my favorite cars of all time. Yeah, it's not the most powerful but it's honestly 9/10ths the performance of the D4 with a lot more smoothness and less drama thanks to being naturally aspirated. I do wish it had the technology package of the D4, but it is a 17 year old car and smartphones and bluetooth were brand new completely novel ideas at the time and you can get AMI interfaces to add bluetooth music at the very least.

I think if you can find one that isn't trashed and the engine is nice and strong with no signs of the common issues, they are a crazy good car for cruising and sounding cool. It's not a super sharp handler but it does look and sound amazing even just driving around town. Just be prepared for expensive maintenace (11.5qt oil changes!) and electrical gremlins that may make it hard to live with if they get bad.