A few weeks back, I bought a car I never expected to: A 2014 Audi A8L with over 215,000 miles on the clock. I wasn’t looking for one, and I’m not exactly the type to buy huge, air-suspension-equipped German limousines, even if they are the right price.
But I needed a car to go ice racing, and this A8 was an all-wheel drive car available on Facebook Marketplace for a reasonable price. Most importantly for my use case, it already had winter tires installed, which means I didn’t need to make any modifications before I went racing just 16 hours later.
That saga, which I covered on the site after that faithful weekend, went off way better than I was expecting. Usually, when you buy a cheap car from some guy on Facebook, you expect at least a few issues to pop up. But everything went according to plan, and the car performed excellently. Now, though, I’m going to ask even more of it.
Here’s Where We’re At
After four years of no racing due to mild winters, the organization I race with, the Adirondack Motor Enthusiast Club (AMEC), finally got lucky enough with the cold weather in February to hold a race on a frozen lake. If you recall from my last write-up on this saga, I didn’t think this would ever happen, which is why I sold my Miata last fall.
When AMEC announced they’d actually be holding a race this year, I was left without a car. Determined not to miss out on some of the last truly affordable wheel-to-wheel racing left in the country, I dug through Facebook Marketplace until I discovered this A8.
The car itself is in fairly nice shape, considering the miles. It’s a 2014 model-year D4-generation car with the 3.0-liter supercharged V6 that’s totally unmodified, save for a set of Bridgestone Blizzak DM-V2 tires wrapped around the alloy wheels. It has some dents and dings, plus a check engine light for what the previous owner described as a “small vacuum leak” and a cracked windshield. But that’s about it.
Despite heavy competition from smaller Subarus, Volkswagens, and Audis, the lengthy, hefty A8 performed pretty well on the ice, netting me a second-place finish and two third-place finishes throughout the three heats of the day. A couple of weeks later, AMEC held another event, where I took the A8 back to compete against an even larger number of cars. There, I managed to do even better, scoring two second-place finishes and a third-place finish. So far, so good.
I Sure Hope It Can Take These Beatings
This is all to say that I have truly only spent around two days with this car, despite owning it for several weeks. I live in New York City, but keep it stored in my parents’ driveway about an hour and a half north, which means I haven’t been able to really give it a once-over off the ice yet. But I’m so confident in its ability to perform that I’m planning to do even more racing with it this weekend.
Specifically, AMEC is planning a double-header tomorrow and Sunday, which means a total of six races and two practice sessions. That’s in addition to the roughly 400 miles of road driving I’ll also have to do to get the car from my parents’ house to the lake and back. All in a car that I still haven’t even changed the oil in.
While the A8 hasn’t given me any issues so far, I’m still pretty nervous. I’ve spent maybe a total of 8 hours behind the wheel of this thing, so I don’t really know which noises to listen for and which to ignore. Is that the whine of the supercharger, or some transmission-related bearing failure waiting to happen? And there’s a knocking coming from the front left suspension that seems to come and go depending on the time of day.
If I had a garage or even my own driveway near my home, this is the kind of stuff I’d be able to suss out in a few hours. But because I live in New York City, where a private parking spot can cost as much as a mansion in some parts of the country, that’s not possible. I just haven’t had any time to go up to my parents’ house during the week to really dig into this thing.
Taking it on this big a trip and chucking it sideways for two straight days on ice means that if something is about to go wrong, it probably will—it’s not like I’m taking it easy out on the ice. I’m absolutely going for it, and asking a whole lot of that Quattro system. And unlike the first time I did this, where I had a friend driving my Range Rover to play support car, there will be no such backup machine there to tow me off the ice if something happens.
All of that being said, if I didn’t think the car could do it, I wouldn’t be going. So far, the car hasn’t developed any new issues, new noises, or weird driving characteristics since I bought it. That check engine light on the dash glows as bright as ever, but it hasn’t impacted the engine’s performance (that I can tell, anyway). In any case, please wish me luck.
Top graphic images: Brian Silvestro; Tatsunoko Production
The post I’m About To Put My 215,000-Mile Audi A8 Through Its Toughest Test Yet: Two Straight Days Of Drifting appeared first on The Autopian.
