In March I sold this:
Why? It felt done.. I did a lot to that car in a short time, and I realized all that was left to do was big ticket items like a turbo upgrade, bags, and finally trying to complete the black headliner swap. I loved that car, but I just didn't feel like putting that much more money into it. It already looked like I wanted it to, and it performed like I wanted it to, so it was "done." Which, in my mind, usually means it's time to sell and find something new.
I posted it for sale in mid-December and got quite few bites, but nothing materialized. I was in pretty deep talks with a couple guys, one of whom really seemed to want the car, but I could just tell he was not the right buyer. I wanted someone who understood what it meant to buy someone else's project car, and knew that it might be a little rough around the edges in some parts. This guy was an Audi enthusiast, but I could tell he was looking for something different than my allroad could offer. I wasn't upset when he decided to move along. I still wasn't 100% sure I wanted to sell the car anyway.
With the birth of our second child in September 2015, the allroad was feeling small. I felt like maybe I should go full dad-mode for a while and get something a bit more practical. So I got this on 12/31/15:
Basically the minivan for dads who don't want to drive a minivan.
After a couple more months with both cars, I found a buyer who seemed to fit the bill. He was an Audi enthusiast and owned a stage 3 B5 S4 Avant. He knew what it meant to drive a modified car, and was already a wagon guy, so I knew I'd found my buyer. We talked off and on for a few weeks, and agreed on a price that we could both be happy with. We set a date, and he planned to fly in, buy the car from me, and drive it back home across the country. Money was sent, and the car was officially sold.
Once that was settled, I took the car in to have its front brakes replaced, as part of our agreement based on the PPI results. I also had the serpentine belt replaced because it was getting up there in miles and would need to be done soon. I also wanted to make sure to tie up any potential loose ends before my buyer flew in, because I didn't want to send the car on its way with any issues. I wanted to be able to keep in contact with him on good terms, so I could watch the car progress.
After that service, the car started making an odd noise from the front end when the wheels were turned. I took it back to my shop, but they could not identify a cause. I took it to another shop, who noticed a fluid leaking from somewhere in the left front wheel well. It wasn't brake fluid, it wasn't power steering fluid, we were stumped. Finally, another mechanic walked over, dipped his finger in the small puddle of fluid on the floor, tasted it, and said "that's shock oil." It turned out that the strut in one of my H&R coilovers had blown, hence the noise at full lock.
I texted my buyer and asked him to call me at his earliest convenience. He immediately called in a slight panic after my vague text. I explained the situation, and laid out three options. This was Wednesday, and he was flying in on Friday to drive it home.
Option 1: He drives the car home as it was, and I'd either reduce the price or help him get a replacement strut. The car was still driving fine, but maybe a bit bouncier, thanks to the blown shock. Would I want to drive it across the country like that? No, but it could be done.
Option 2: I could re-install the stock suspension, since he had mentioned replacing the H&R's soon anyway to give the car a refreshed suspension.
Option 3: We could cancel the deal, and I'd refund his money. I called this the "nuclear option," and I secretly hoped he'd take it.
He said he'd think about it and get back to me. I called around to see if any shops could get the car in ASAP. Meanwhile, he started looking online to see if he could have a new coilover kit overnighted to me for installation at my shop before he arrived. A few hours later, we both came to the same conclusion: The stock suspension would go back into the car for his drive home and he would replace it later when it didn't need to be rushed.
One of the local shops did me a huge favor and fit the car in first thing Thursday. I dropped it off with the stock suspension in the back and told them to throw the H&R coilovers back into the box when they were done.
On Thursday evening, I picked the car up after its alignment. At stock height, it looked like a completely different car.
Friday went off without a hitch. I went home over my lunch break and met my buyer there when his Uber dropped him off. We chatted for a while, then signed papers, took a couple photos, shook hands, and he was off.
Pause for dramatic effect
So for the first time since 2009, I was no longer an Audi owner, and it felt a little weird. I've never been a huge fan of SUVs, yet here I was daily driving a big black one. Part of the thought behind getting the Jeep is that I wouldn't be as tempted to modify it. As anyone can probably guess, that didn't last. Soon after I bought it I had the windows tinted, some parts wrapped in vinyl, and have installed 1.25" spacers, along with a couple other little things.
Still, it wasn't satisfying my urge to put together another fun car. I started toying with the idea of buying a C5 allroad as a second car to play with, even though I knew literally nothing about the C5 platform or the 2.7T. I have friends with B5 S4's and C5 allroads, and I see how often they're not running, so I wasn't sure if I had the fortitude to pull it off.
I shopped around for a bit, with the guidance of a couple C5 allroad friends/masochists. When I learned that there were two Olympic allroads currently up for sale, I started thinking about how cool it would be to own one. I talked to the owners of both, and came close to buying one, but in the end, decided that I would rather stick to the B8 platform since I've had 4 of them already and felt like I knew it inside & out, rather than start all over with the C5. Plus, I've gotten used to being spoiled by the features of the B8, so getting into a C5 would probably be a huge shock to my cozy little world.
This post is already getting too long. I'll try to speed it along.
So I started looking at specifically at a couple B8 models: Another 2013+ S4, or a 2011-2012 B8 A4 Avant. I had a 2013 S4 prior to the allroad, and I really liked it. If my black allroad hadn't come up for sale when it did, and if the deal hadn't fallen into place so smoothly, including having all the S4's suspension transferred to the allroad for free, then I'd probably still be in the S4 today. The B8 A4 Avant, even though I'd already owned one of those too, seemed like a good candidate for a K04 upgrade.
During my search, I realized that B8 Avants are not only rare, they are still being priced pretty high. A well-equipped 2012 is priced about the same as a 2013 S4. I couldn't justify spending that much for an A4 when I could get an S4 for the same money, so I focused on S4's for a while. I came very close to buying one out of Texas that was identical to my black S4, except it had a DSG where mine was a manual. That deal didn't go anywhere because the seller wouldn't meet me in the middle on a price. I looked at a few others, but didn't get serious about any other S4's.
Then a B8 A4 Avant popped up here in the Audizine classifieds for a ridiculously low price, and with the titanium package, sport interior, and a K04 to boot. I contacted the seller and we started talking.
I should mention that at some point in all this, I came in contact with a guy here on Audizine who has recently performed an S4 drivetrain swap on a B8 A4 Avant, creating about as close as you can get to an S4 Avant here in the US. Plus, he converted it to a manual, making it that much more awesome. He had been urging me to find a good A4 Avant to buy as a candidate, and he would help me locate a donor wrecked S4 to scavenge a motor from. I decided this was all a good idea and that I probably should do this.
I spoke with the A4 Avant's owner for a while, and came close to sending him money a couple times, but the car had Audi's notorious oil consumption issue, which meant that to keep it on the road until I could do an S4 drivetrain swap, I'd have to spend a decent amount of money on the 2.0T. In the end, after much consternation, I decided to pass on the A4 Avant. I'd still love to do an S4 swap someday, but that's much farther down the road now.
The C5 allroad search had been cancelled, the S4 search had stalled, and a suitable A4 Avant was looking like it was going to be too expensive to be a swap donor, at least right now. So, of course, I started looking at allroads again. It only felt right.
I scoured Autotrader and Cars.com multiple times a day. I tried different search criteria to find that one allroad that had everything I wanted. I decided early on that I would buy a car with a black headliner already, otherwise I would end up spending a ton of money to try and piece it together myself again. I don't know why, but I have an irrational love for the black headliners in wagons, and a hatred for the stock grey ones. My S4's all had black headliners, and my B8 Avant had a black headliner too, thanks to its alcantara sport interior. Only my B7 Avant and my allroad had grey headliners. (Technically my B6 did too, but I don't count that car because I knew very little about Audis when I bought it.)
In 2013, the only way to get a black headliner was to get the chestnut brown seats. In 2014, you could option the black sport seats with a black headliner, and in 2015+, you could add a black headliner as a no-cost option to any interior color. Since I was mainly focusing on 2013 allroads, I set all my searches to look for only cars with brown interiors. And since I was being picky, I was only looking for cars with the sport interior too, so I was already stacking the deck against myself. A good allroad is hard to find. A good allroad with brown leather & black headliner is a bit tougher. A good allroad with brown sport interior was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Most dealers don't really know what features their used cars have, and most probably don't care. I had to scrutinize interior photos to figure out if a car had what I considered my "must-have" options:
- Sport seats
- 3G Nav+
- Advanced Key
- B&O stereo
Beyond that, any additional options were a bonus. I didn't need side assist or adaptive cruise or drive select, though all those things would be nice to have.
A few cars checked all the boxes, but as I learned when looking for allroads last time, most of them are black. Since I already had two black cars in my garage (my wife has a black 2015 Passat), and my previous allroad and S4 were both black, I wanted something in a different color, and I definitely wanted the contrasting flares after having the color-matched flares on my black allroad. White was at the top of my list, after seeing the cars from J_Sims, daohaus, RPI, and others. I also liked silver after spending lots of time drooling over killerboots' allroad on RS5 rotors. I decided I could also do monsoon grey. Volcano red was a definite option, but those are rare as hell. I really wanted scuba blue, but in all my searching, I had only seen one or two pop up for sale, and never with all the "right" options.
The color I came across most often with the brown sport interior was moonlight blue. As nice as it is, I just couldn't get myself to love that color. I had a deep sea blue 2011 S4 for a while, and my only complaint about that color was that it was a bit too staid. Moonlight blue is also just a bit too close to black for my tastes too, and I did not want another black car.
One day, the perfect allroad appeared in my saved search. And by perfect, I mean it was monsoon grey, had everything on my must-have list, and also had Drive Select, Adaptive Cruise, and rear door sunshades. It was literally loaded. Best of all, it was local to me, which seemed like it must be fate. It was listed at $27,991 on a local Chrysler dealer's used car lot.
I called and set up an appointment to take it for a test drive, and tried to hide my enthusiasm when they pulled it up. I'd never seen an allroad so well-equipped before. Perhaps the only downsides, if there were any at all, was that it had 65k miles and was missing its cargo cover. I bought my black allroad at 65k miles, so I was not averse to buying another in that range, but I had been hoping to find one with at least a little bit of factory warranty left.
The missing cargo cover, that was another issue. In my searching online, I noticed that a lot of Avants and allroads were missing their cargo covers. I've heard of owners taking these out and just storing them in the garage, so I'm assuming a lot of them just never made it back into the car when it was traded in. It may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people, but to me, a car should be as complete as possible.
During my test drive, I learned that this car had been owned by one of the managers at the dealership, and there was a chance that the cargo cover might still be in his possession. I made them an offer, contingent on them finding the cargo cover or sourcing me another one, whether it was new or used. MSRP for a new one is over $800, so I was pretty sure they weren't going to do that, but thought maybe they'd been willing to pay the ~$200 that I've seen them go for on eBay.
I talked them into letting me take the car over to a trusted Audi shop for a PPI, so I spent a couple hours with it one afternoon getting to know it. The car checked out very well, except for a leaking shock (which would be replaced my coilovers anyway) and a window regulator that was working, but showing signs of impending failure. Otherwise, it had no issues. I even washed it while I had it, and took a couple photos.
They rejected my first offer, so I left and said I'd be in touch. I texted the salesman again the next day with another $500 on my offer, but still with the condition that the car have a cargo cover. He assured me that the cover had been found, and he'd just put it on the car, but his used car manager still rejected my price offer. I said fine, and told him to contact me when they wanted to sell the car.
The next day, I got a text from the salesman that they would, apparently begrudgingly, sell me the car at the price I'd offered, but I had to get to the dealership RIGHT NOW to get that price. I replied "LOL, no. I'll get there when I can." I hate dealer tactics like that. I dictate when I come in, not them. I don't respond to that kind of pressure, especially from a Chrysler dealer that knew they'd never see me again after I bought the car, so they didn't really care to extend any politeness my way. Their behavior was adding up, and it was starting to piss me off, but still, I did want the car.
I went to my credit union, filled out all the paperwork, and then headed over to the dealership to buy the car. In the meantime, I noticed that the price of the car on their site had mysteriously been raised by $1,000 to $28,991. I arrived at the dealership with a friend in tow to help me get both my Jeep and the allroad back home (the Jeep wasn't being traded in).
The salesman I had been talking to wasn't there, so they handed me off to the greasiest, most stereotypical car salesman you can imagine. He tossed me the keys to the allroad so I could check it out. Everything looked good, and that brown sport interior, while maybe a bit odd with a monsoon grey exterior, was looking great. Then I opened the hatch and noticed that there was still no cargo cover. Instead, the partition net had appeared and had been installed, so they probably thought they had found the cargo cover. Well, I still wanted the car, but I also wanted a cargo cover with it. Since my offer was contingent on that, I walked inside to chat with somebody.
The salesman said he couldn't do anything, and pointed me to a used car manager sitting behind a desk on the sales floor. I explained the issue, and that I wanted the car, but that I wanted some sort of concession on their part. I gave them a couple options:
- Go back to the previous owner's house (since he worked there) and look for the cargo cover. If found, we have a deal.
- Find me a good used cargo cover.
- Lower the price of the car accordingly.
The manager's response was just "No, we're not going to do any of those things. We've had a lot of interest in this car, so it'll sell whether you buy it or not." When I asked why the price had increased by $1,000 online that day, he had no answer, but said "maybe they decided to buy a new cargo cover for it and raised the price to cover it." So yeah, he was just a dick.
I grew increasingly pissed off, and I'm a pretty easy going person. As much as I wanted the car, I was finding it very difficult to give this dealership my money. So I tossed the keys to the salesman and walked out.
As of today, May 31st, the car is still for sale on their lot. It is a great car, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who was interested, as long as you can limit your interaction with the dealership.
So, back to the search. A couple other cars came close, but still didn't have everything I was looking for. I added "black headliner" to my list of must-haves, because if I'm going to go to the trouble of shipping a car, it'd better have everything I want. The next closest car popped up in Chicago at a small dealership. This one had all the options on my must-have list, including brown sport seats. The only caveats were that it had rather high miles (85k), and the size of the dealer made me a bit hesitant. I spoke to a guy there named Joel a few times, and he was a very direct guy, no beating around the bush.
The car had one previous owner, and was purchased at the Audi Exchange, which turned out to be less than a mile up the road from the dealership that was selling the car. I called Audi Exchange and asked them about the history of the car. They said it had been serviced there since new, and was traded in recently. Because of its high miles, Audi Exchange decided to sell it wholesale since it couldn't be certified. The dealership that has it now bought it straight from Audi Exchange. To me, the fact that it was a straight sale and didn't go to auction was a good sign. I decided to pursue it a bit, so I had the dealer send it to Audi Exchange for a PPI. A couple days later, the results came back positive. It was another nice allroad in good shape and no red flags, and the price was right at $23,000. I decided to move forward on it, so we started working on the paperwork.
Oh, did I mention that it was black?
Yep, I was about to buy the another black allroad, but at least this one had the contrasting grey flares, unlike my last one. Still, this one had everything I wanted, and the price was so low that it would make a good base for the mods I had planned. And it had the brown sport interior with black headliner.
After a few phone calls back and forth, it seemed like I had found my allroad. We started coordinating shipping and payment. Because I work downtown Minneapolis, I decided that I would have the car shipped to one of our local Audi shops. I sent the dealer that address, and my office address to overnight me the paperwork so we could get the deal done.
The next day, I got a call saying that all the documents had been overnight to the shop, not my office. The dealer got the addresses mixed up. Because the shop is on the other side of town, it would take me some time to get there and pick up the paperwork. I wasn't able to get there for 3 days, so the deal didn't move for a little bit. I was finally able to pick up the paperwork on the evening of May 5th and took it home. My plan was to take it all into the office with me the next day, sign it, and send it back out via UPS. Here's where this story actually gets interesting (if you've made it this far.)
I mentioned that we had a son in September 2015. Right now, he still wakes up a couple times each night to be fed, and my wife and I take turns. It was during a 5am feeding that I got an email alert from Autotrader that a new vehicle matched my criteria, so I checked it out.
The listing didn't have much info, and the pics were terrible, but wait ... is that Scuba blue? With a brown sport interior?
Holy crap, it is scuba blue. It has the brown sport interior. It has the black headliner.
The pics in the listing were all marked "in transit," which I assumed meant that the car was not yet at the dealer that listed it, which would also explain the terrible photos. It was also labeled as Audi Certified, so the price was higher than what I was looking to pay. But, I had an idea.
I used the "chat now" function on the dealership's site, Day Audi in Monroeville, PA. I asked if the car had arrived, and if it had gone through the certification process yet. The woman I talked to did some checking, and found out that the car had not yet arrived at the dealership, but was on its way. I explained that I would like to purchase the car without Audi CPO, since I would just void the warranty soon anyway. Since the dealership pays to certify a car, and marks up the price of the car accordingly, it would be wasted money for both of us. Surprisingly, she didn't end the conversation right there. She spoke to her general manager, and told me he'd be in touch.
A few minutes later, I got a call from the general manager of the dealership. I explained that I'm an Audi enthusiast and sent him a couple photos of my previous cars. I told him that I wanted the allroad just listed, but didn't want it certified, and wanted to know if they would work with me on the price of the car without CPO. After seeing pics of my last allroad, he sounded intrigued. He asked where I needed to be on the price, and I shot him a price that was fair, but also a lot less than it was listed for online. Surprisingly, he didn't laugh and hang up. After a couple moments of silence, he said "You know, I'm tempted to get this done today."
Pause for dramatic effect
I waited a few days for the car to arrive at the dealership and for it to be thoroughly detailed and inspected before I got to see decent photos of it. This is the first one that I got:
This pic made me glad that I had gone through everything to get this far. I have wanted a scuba blue allroad for years, but they never come up for sale. In the past three years, I've seen 2 other scubas come up for sale, but not with the options I wanted.
After that, it's kind of a blur. I went back to my bank, I got a check, we organized shipping, and before I knew it, the car was on its way to Minnesota.
I'm skipping ahead a little bit, but everything went very smoothly. Everyone that I talked to at Day Audi was, in a word, awesome. The saleswoman, the manager, the finance guy, were all polite, easy to deal with and seemed genuinely interested in my plans for the car. Easily the best car buying experience I've ever had.
I should mention that I did make one concession on this car. High up on my list of "must-haves" was the B&O stereo, which I realized after I saw the window sticker, this car doesn't have. The lack of B&O was a dealbreaker on every other car I had looked at online, but none of those were scuba blue with brown sport interior. I decided that out of all my must-haves, B&O was the easiest that I could address myself later on.
The car arrived on May 23rd. After a quick walkaround inspection, I took it for its first wash:
And of course, those brown sport seats:
So that's that. I'm still a little bit in shock that I finally found my scuba allroad, and that if the second dealership had sent the paperwork for the black allroad to the right address in the first place, then I would have missed out on it completely.
Before the car even arrived, I bought a set of silver S5 mirrors from the classifieds here, so those were the first "official" mod to go on the car.
Those decals on the side were the next to go. I didn't hate them, but I wanted the car to start out as a blank canvas, so they had to come off.
After that, here's the official "before" pic:
As far as plans go for this car, my #1 goal is to build a car I'll never want to sell. I'm going to do my best to not duplicate what I did on the last one, but some of the same mods are inevitable. I'm also going to strive to differentiate my car from sedan guy's gorgeous scuba blue allroad, which I have been drooling over for years. This is actually going to be very difficult, because he has fantastic taste in mods.
Wheels, tires, and exhaust have already arrived. I just ordered SPC control arms and a high-flow cat, thanks to Eurocode's current sale. Remember those H&R coilovers that came off the black allroad? It turned out to be dumb luck that I still have those. I ordered two replacement front struts for them, and they'll go onto this car. Other short term plans include tint and an APR E85 tune, but since this car still has a good deal of factory warranty left, I'm going to wait a bit to make sure that all systems are in working order before I TD1 it.
Otherwise, that is the extent of my plans for 2016 for this car. I have other ideas for next year, but after going a bit crazy on the black one in just a few months, I didn't get to enjoy the car as much along the way. I want to take my time with this one.
Suffice it to say, I'm thrilled to be back in an Audi. I still have the Jeep and it's my daily driver for now while our kids are in giant car seats. The allroad isn't going to get driven as much as I would like, but that will make the time I spend in it that much more enjoyable. I am really looking forward to driving it out to Camp allroad in July.
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Now if I can somehow try to attend Camp allroad 
I think a lot of us wagon guys can relate to your journey, I definitely can. As every avant owner will say, just gotta be patient. 
Originally Posted by dropshadow
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