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After a short few miles I drove this car before it's drive range sensor went kaput inside the trans, I can say its a lot less involving and feels less connected to the road than my e90 328i. Now don't get me wrong, it is faster, both in a straight line and most likely in the corners, but doesn't feel as much fun. It feels like it first goes into a corner as an fwd car but then electronics kicks in and tries to make it turn ( I should say, very successfully) - but this feels artificial and as if it drives itself. It is designed so that somebody who can put a downpayment down and make payments could drive it fast without working too hard or bothering to learn any skills. Don't feel like a drivers car to me, more about the luxury.
Reliability is another aspect to it - it's not a reliable alternative to 335i at all. Like I said, drive range sensor buried inside the trans quit on my car and I'll need to open it up to replace. And that's a common problem, not to mention that the transmission as a whole is a problematic piece. Now, people who just wanted to drive fast without effort also didn't buy many manual s4s new, so these are very expensive used (about 20k).
But it's not just their dsg transmission which has problems, the engine has some problems, too. Don't even think about tuning it if you want to keep your cats alive. If your melt them, factory manual will ask you to drop the trans to change them, though you can probably just drop the subframe to get them out. They might fail without tuning, too. Also, it's a lot more difficult to do many things on it compared to BMW's and parts are more expensive.
Anyways, figured that if I want to go fast in a straight line and in relative comfort, I can find something cheaper and without problems Audis have. B8 platform Audis are driving worse than e90 BMWs anyway, and they are probably not driving much better than LX platform Dodge cars. I actually liked how Charger RT drove.
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