I have a 335i rwd and have driven in a couple winters. It was not the greatest, but I never once got stuck. I daily drive a b7 audi avant 2.0 quattro, its really nice having the awd for sure, but it would be hard to give up my 335 for just the audi. Maybe an S4 is a happier medium between the two. But I think a clean b8 s4 is at least $40K about now.
I second the fact that you best go drive one first, going down to the 2.0t is a big change, I have an apr flash on mine just to get a bit more out of it, but its still slow as fuck!
Edit: I average about 22-23mpg in the audi with mixed city/highway driving fyi. I think you could do just as good in a 328xi possibly.
Agreed on the A3, but that would mean they’d also have to actually build an a3 with a real quattro system rather than the haldex system it currently has.
I agree that you should be able to get anywhere in WNY with FWD or RWD so long as you have snows, but I don’t think it would be nearly as much fun. There’s nothing quite like a nice 4 wheel drift with AWD on an icy/snowy day.
they do make a manual A3 quattro, It’s called a VW R20. Or if you want the VR6, you could always get quattro and a manual. I even believe that once they phased out the VR6 they started to offer the A3 with a 2.0T and quattro. I love my FWD A3, and with snow tires I don’t doubt I could go anywhere in any weather, the traction control is great and really keeps the the thing moving when traction is low. That said, it’s more relaxing and less work to have an AWD car.
I absolutely LOVE the new S4. You’ll never make it work finacially to get rid of your 335 and save money by going to the S4 in the big picture, but I think you’ll really like it as the interior is much nicer and the supercharger works and sounds amazing.
The BMW is more of a driver’s car, but I think I would still take the audi for a daily.