Against all the scaremongering I've bought a C5 RS6
Discussion
Well to go alongside my newly acquired 147 GTA and against all of the scaremongering I've gone and bought a 2003 C5 RS6. I did have one a couple of years ago and it's one of the few cars I regret selling. I know people say they are expensive to run and constantly break however my last one did over 15k in just over a year and apart from copious amounts of fuel, a set of tyres and a service it didn't cost me anything extra.
These cars are over 10 years old now and you can buy them for very little, this means that many have been neglected and even more need lots of money spent on them, however once in a while a little gem surfaces. I've been looking for over three months, have phoned up about a few and have been to see a couple but none have really ticked all of the boxes and many are still for sale now.
Then one came up, low mileage (44k), well written advert, rare half leather and Alcantara interior, an indication of all the preventative measures taken and had just had a new gearbox fitted along with cambelt service at one of the leading RS specialists in the UK - Unit 20. I phoned the seller who was very knowledgeable and was an active member on an RS forum so I could go back and look at his old posts etc to see some history of the car. He bought it in Feb and has had a run of bad luck resulting in 12k spent since he took ownership of it
The last bill was for just over 5k at the end of October for the gearbox and cambelt service. I phoned Martin at Unit 20 who gave me a rundown of the car and said it was one of the cleanest he has seen and couldn't believe he was selling it after spending 10 months getting it perfect. That was enough for me, I agreed a price over the phone with the seller and booked a flight to Edinburgh.
Once I got there, it was easy to see that the car had been extremely well looked after, the interior is like new. He has replaced most of the buttons on the centre console as he said the old ones looked a bit tired and has spent almost 2k upgrading the old Audi satnav unit to the latest RNSD AMI system with ipod integration and bluetooth. All disks and pads have also been replaced in the last two months with RS6 Plus versions and when he bought the car it was on replica C6 RS6 alloys and he has spent 2k replacing them with genuine RS6 Plus versions too. The car was already on Bilstein coilovers when he bought it so I don't have any of the DRC worries either.
As we were running through the car he said that had I not called he was considering removing the advert and keeping it and if I had not showed up he would definitely have taken the advert down. At this point I genuinely thought he was going to say that he'd changed his mind and wasn't going to sell it to me anyway. I transferred the money and he had a genuine Vagcom cable for diagnostics so I bought that off him too.
The 400 mile journey home was quite an uneventful trip really, nothing broke, no warning lights came on and the gearbox is still working. In fact the trip was that boring that I got carried away and booked it in for a MRC stage 2 map with catless downpipes and non res Milltek at the end of the month. The power is plenty as it is but my last one had a Milltek non res catback and sounded great. This is still on the standard exhaust and so I want to release a bit more of that V8 rumble. Aside from this I want to remove the tinted rear lights and put standard ones back on, remove the colour coded bootstrip and replace with a satin black version to match the rest of the black optics, reinstate the Audi rings on the boot and put some genuine RS chrome mirrors on (which I already have). The plate is going back to the seller.
Anyway, I'll keep it updated on here and see if this thing can drain my bank account too
Pics
These cars are over 10 years old now and you can buy them for very little, this means that many have been neglected and even more need lots of money spent on them, however once in a while a little gem surfaces. I've been looking for over three months, have phoned up about a few and have been to see a couple but none have really ticked all of the boxes and many are still for sale now.
Then one came up, low mileage (44k), well written advert, rare half leather and Alcantara interior, an indication of all the preventative measures taken and had just had a new gearbox fitted along with cambelt service at one of the leading RS specialists in the UK - Unit 20. I phoned the seller who was very knowledgeable and was an active member on an RS forum so I could go back and look at his old posts etc to see some history of the car. He bought it in Feb and has had a run of bad luck resulting in 12k spent since he took ownership of it
The last bill was for just over 5k at the end of October for the gearbox and cambelt service. I phoned Martin at Unit 20 who gave me a rundown of the car and said it was one of the cleanest he has seen and couldn't believe he was selling it after spending 10 months getting it perfect. That was enough for me, I agreed a price over the phone with the seller and booked a flight to Edinburgh.Once I got there, it was easy to see that the car had been extremely well looked after, the interior is like new. He has replaced most of the buttons on the centre console as he said the old ones looked a bit tired and has spent almost 2k upgrading the old Audi satnav unit to the latest RNSD AMI system with ipod integration and bluetooth. All disks and pads have also been replaced in the last two months with RS6 Plus versions and when he bought the car it was on replica C6 RS6 alloys and he has spent 2k replacing them with genuine RS6 Plus versions too. The car was already on Bilstein coilovers when he bought it so I don't have any of the DRC worries either.
As we were running through the car he said that had I not called he was considering removing the advert and keeping it and if I had not showed up he would definitely have taken the advert down. At this point I genuinely thought he was going to say that he'd changed his mind and wasn't going to sell it to me anyway. I transferred the money and he had a genuine Vagcom cable for diagnostics so I bought that off him too.
The 400 mile journey home was quite an uneventful trip really, nothing broke, no warning lights came on and the gearbox is still working. In fact the trip was that boring that I got carried away and booked it in for a MRC stage 2 map with catless downpipes and non res Milltek at the end of the month. The power is plenty as it is but my last one had a Milltek non res catback and sounded great. This is still on the standard exhaust and so I want to release a bit more of that V8 rumble. Aside from this I want to remove the tinted rear lights and put standard ones back on, remove the colour coded bootstrip and replace with a satin black version to match the rest of the black optics, reinstate the Audi rings on the boot and put some genuine RS chrome mirrors on (which I already have). The plate is going back to the seller.
Anyway, I'll keep it updated on here and see if this thing can drain my bank account too
Pics
Edited by magpie21 on Friday 8th November 13:42
Very nice , awesome sleeper car to the 95% of people who will just think it's another audi estate! You're right it would look better with the normal rear lights and the audi badge put back on. If you don't mind me asking , how much did you pay for it?
Look forward to reading about it in the future!
Look forward to reading about it in the future!
An RS6 and an M5 are one of those cars that you check the classifieds and say to yourself that the fuel and running costs don't matter as they are such complete cars. Your one looks a beauty.
Personally I would put the Audi rings back on and change the rear lights as a few have said.
Hope you enjoy it.
Personally I would put the Audi rings back on and change the rear lights as a few have said.
Hope you enjoy it.
Thanks all, like I said in the opening post, standard rear lights and rear badge are going to be put back on. Just need to work out how to get the boot strip on the bottom of the tailgate back to black. It looks like it's riveted on so may just get it wrapped somewhere.
And yes the plate is supposed to read 'kiss arse' but this is going back to the seller. Said he paid £1600 for it!!
And yes the plate is supposed to read 'kiss arse' but this is going back to the seller. Said he paid £1600 for it!!
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