I sold my Audi RS4 after five years, and science says I’m allowed to be sad

In 2021, I wrote a story about how selling a car can quietly haunt you. In it I was quoted, talking about the BMW 335i Touring I drove after seven years, admitting that I was depressed for a week and that I had asked my girlfriend to take a picture of me next to her, something I had never done in my life.

I read it again this morning, a few hours after signing up my 2019 Audi RS4 Avant. Five years later, I apparently haven’t learned anything. Nothing, I tell you.

The RS4 was the car I drove every day. Home to work. Dog in Boots, Surfboard, Road Trips, Melbourne Races, etc.

And yet it is a car. No pets, no brothers or sisters moving to Turkmenistan. This is a wagon with a checkered service history, tires in need of replacement, more than a few gremlins for the 2019 model (let’s not go there), and I’m still getting the feeling of seeing it loaded onto a truck headed to its new home.

But apparently it’s okay to feel that way. Counseling Psychologist Dr. Beth Anfilogoff has explained that cars are actually present during important life events And serves as a source of independence, comfort, and reliability, so it’s not surprising that people talk fondly about companions of many years. They also found that people who seek comfort in objects are more open, more creative, and generally more emotional.

I’m choosing to read this as a compliment.

The part that buyers should be concerned about came out of the journal of consumer psychologyWhere Norbert Schwarz and Jesse Chandler found that even small signs indicating that a product was alive made people reluctant to replace it, and led people to regard their car as alive and stopped caring about how well it actually drove. Anyone who has named their car will understand this.

This is a polite academic way of saying that as soon as you call the car “it,” you lose the conversation with yourself. Former DMARGE editor Sir Jamie Weiss Named his old Ford Probe “El Probo” in the original story. I rest my case.

I also believe that ego is another part of it. The RS4 is one of the great daily drivers, and one of the reasons why I love it is because of what it says about me. Looks like it’s a school drop-off special, goes like the clappers. Especially in a world that’s leaning toward dumb EV power.

That 2.9 liter twin turbo V6 stays quiet in the car park and then betrays you at 6am. It’s a cold winter morning and the thing clears the throat so loudly that the curtains of three houses slide down. I learned which neighbors were early risers and which were not. Sorry not sorry.

The benefits of doing this work showed up on the odometer. Press loan, the launch, a week in a Cadillac, a fortnight in a Zeeker, a road trip in the Yukon Denali. Every single one of those weeks has been a week when the RS4 has been sitting in the office carpark, and in its five years at Wahroonga a retired accountant has had more readings than someone who reviews cars for a living. Good news for buyers, and this is one of the rare occasions when this industry’s profits translate into dollars.

So where do you go after this? The BMW M3 Touring was planned for years, no one asked and many people didn’t, and it just didn’t happen that way. The RS6 is the natural step up, big and angry and still capable of carrying four people to Byron without complaint.

I really wanted a Mercedes-AMG E53 estate. The plug-in hybrid combines a turbocharged 3.0-litre inline six with an electric motor and accelerates to 100 km/h in 3.8 seconds. Mercedes confirmed this for US showrooms, where BMW already ships the M5 Touring.

Mercedes-Benz Australia has ruled out the C-Class estate in all forms, citing rising SUV demand and steadily falling estate demand, and both the current C-Class and E-Class wagons have been confirmed not to be coming here. The fast wagon is having its best decade since the E63, and we’re watching from the sidelines while dealers push another GLC. Wow! That said, the GLC53 isn’t a bad-looking car. Was half tempted.

There’s also a real possibility that the RS4 was my last petrol car. After driving EVs for years for reviews and writing about changes with a certain amount of skepticism, I either put my money where my mouth is or keep talking, and that prospect makes me feel a little sick. The option is to be patient until the RS5 Avant gets here. watch this space…..

The silver lining is that my father has bought it. Going from a BMW M4 to an RS4, whether that’s a downgrade or an upgrade, depends on how much you enjoy carrying things. The 335i Touring was his before I bought it from him, so metal now moves in both directions, and I get to see it in the driveway at Christmas instead of some stranger.

It covers about seventy percent of the sting. The rest is something no one warns you about. You don’t just sell the car, you sell the version of yourself who drove it, and that person has no business value.

Enfilogoff’s practical advice deserves attention. Once the car is gone, you’re still the same person with the same memories, and the metal never captured them.