koobah

I'm with you on this and I think the stock ride height is the perfect balance between performance and comfort for a sport sedan, although without a doubt, the engineers almost always have some budget constraints. The stock springs and dampers were designed to offer sporty handling with everyday driveability. Anything lower than stock will give the spring less travel range and definitely take away some comfort and practicality. By how much is subjective, and it also depends how good/bad the roads are where you live.

I'm skeptical about these claims, because I used to have Eibach springs on my A4 and while they were advertised to provide slight lowering with OEM ride quality, the reality was the ride was harsh compared to stock sport suspension. Not only that, it was impossible to drive over some street bumps or inclines without scraping. No doubt that a minimal wheel gap with nice size wheels and perfect offset look hot, but for my daily driver I'm willing to pass.

H&R OE springs are not as conservative as you think. According to specs, they drop the car 1.2" or only .3" less than their sport springs. I don't think it's possible to lower the car by that much and at the same time retain the stock ride quality. A .5" to .75" drop would have been much better for the OE spring IMO. If you really want to go lower, try the H&R OE's and see how they look and feel. Worst case scenario is you'll lose around around grand (thinking about $400 for the springs and $200-300 for every swap with alignment).

On a side note, few days ago I happened to be at an exotic car dealership with Ferraris, Lambos, Astons, etc. and when I looked at the wheel gap on these cars, it was not what we'd call a perfect stance, visually not lower than what you'll find on a stock S4.

koobah

BTW, here's the link for H&R specs: http://hrsprings.com/scripts/appguid...0Audi%20|%20S4

DesertRS4

Went with KW V2's and GMG hollow sway bars. Been on the car for 2 mos now - just made road trip to Colorado and back. Setup is perfect for street and occasional track use.Great everyday ride.Tried the coilovers alone 1st but found that the nose wandered under hard braking and several quick transitions in a row (like a series of s turns) left the chassis unsettled.Sways cured the problem.Still working on final ride height and camber settings on the rear.Like the Stasis stuff but very pricy and the shock rebuild required every 2 yrs is a major expense on top of the initial cost. Simply not a cost effective solution for the S4.Just installed the Forgestars F14 in 19x9 and Yoko Ad08's in 255/35-19. Really stepped up the steering response compared to the Sport Max that came stock and of course they have way more grip.

NWS4Guy

Camber can be adjusted out of what Audi recommends to give the car a loaded stance, where if you are looking at the car from the front, the tops of the tires would tip in slightly, and the bottoms out. This has the tires already set to have more tread in contact with the pavement on corners, but you will pay for this setup by eating tires faster depending on how aggressive you go. The Acura NSX was famous for this setup, and wen through tires (not when using them on the track) just driving around normally within 10K miles often times.

LeadToRome

Gotcha. Kind of in the same vein as getting my Allroad aligned at lever 2 and running it in level 1 all the time - feels great, eats tires.