Cars Worth Noting: 2004 Audi S4 MT6

Come on, fess up. You’ve done it. For just one moment you were Mattias Ekstr?m behind the wheel of an Audi DTM, leading a pack of screaming Mercedes and Opels through the first turn at Estoril. You heel and toe, downshift and nail the apex, the car glued to the road — the Quattro permanent allwheel- drive system keeping it on track.

If it weren’t for moments like those, there wouldn’t be cars like these.

We wouldn’t need the 18-in. alloy wheels and sticky Continental 235/40 ZR18 95Y high performance tires.

We wouldn’t need Audi engineers searching out stiffer spring rates and more accurate shock settings.

We wouldn’t need the 340 hp, 4.2L aluminum DOHC V-8 that’s been shoehorned into a car that was designed for a pokey little 4-cylinder.

We wouldn’t need the extra lateral support of the two-tone dark leather and light gray Alcantara Recaro seats while we smoothly shift through the gate of the 6-speed manual gearbox.

We wouldn’t need boy racers if there wasn’t still a little boy in all of us. Now of course, there is no roll cage in the S4 and 9 mile and Evergreen is worlds away from Europe and they don’t give out speeding tickets at Estoril (no, I didn’t get one). But on the other hand, Ekstr?m doesn’t have all these other ammenities like a dual climate control HVAC system, or a sun roof, or a killer 10- speaker Bose premium sound system to blast his favorite tunes while he’s driving.

All he gets to listen to is the crew screaming into his helmet, “honey, slow down! Are you trying to kill us? What, are you pretending that you’re racing again?”

Well, back to reality.