The reality is, as great a car as it may be, the A8/S8 has historically failed to hold it's resale value. You can find '03 models for right around $30k. Granted it's not the same car, but if you're in the business of setting residuals for these cars that's the data you have. For those of us looking at them used it's great news, but for you it's clearly not. Your options, as I see them:

- Buy it and plan to hold it for a while,
- Wait a little bit and buy it used,
- Suck it up, or
- Buy something esle.

I'm of the opinion that, in this class, buying used makes the most sense. These cars (A8/7/S) depreciate much faster than the C- (A6/5/E) or B-class (A4/3/C) do.

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2002 X5 3.0i