I'm another one that bit the bullet and put a new gearbox in - which I can now look after from new and regularly change the oil in etc +++

From the other side of the coin, my old D2 3.7 had covered 192K miles when I sold it to another member here. He and his wife have pilled on the miles and its still going strong. The car had a complete history, and the gearbox was still original after 13 years and all those miles.

D2 is a fantastic car, has less things to wrong than the D3 and most things seem cheaper to fix, well except the gearbox and oil cooler.

A good point well made, and one I'm now very well aware of :-(

The D2 is by far the best '8 of them all, and definitely in the top three Audi models of all time. I got given a brand new A8 sport exec by my boss so had to take a pic of them all parked up together! There's another D2, too, but that's not in this shot.

http://i665.photobucket.com/albums/v...psqdssqeyr.jpg

I must admit my D3 has had a few more gremlins to resolve compared to the D2.

Also parts do seem that little more pricey, though I have just managed to source a second hand water pump and valves for the D3 at a reasonable price as its getting cold in there!

I mean this S8 on eBay would be a great project:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1998-AUDI-...item27e9c707bc

Have you seen this video? 3 S8 generations compared. There are english captions available.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfvU...XCPUA&index=15