I would recommend a body kit before dropping it. You save the ride too.

 

Where are some places to find a bodykit? When searching I've only seen a kit on LLTEK. And Ebay (which im not sure about buying a kit from).

 

i've heard of people buying kits off ebay and having it work out okay, but you never really know, I'm with you, it seems a little sketch. LLTek is usually the most noted place I see, but you could also search AF

 

I just got my LLTEK catalogue, and to be honest, I think its a bit pricey. I know that if you want better handling, you don't necessarily have to drop it, I hear H-Sport sway bars do magic to cornering without affecting the suspension.

 

sometimes you can accomplish the cool look of a body kit by just painting your lowers. sometimes not. but it's worth a photoshop, i find that with darker cars the painting of the lowers doesn't matter as much.

 

A4s have unpainted lowers (without the sport pack), A6s (US-Spec) ALL come with painted lowers.
No bodykit I've ever seen looks better than the stock A6 look dropped. At least to me...

 

^^True story

 

Yes, I am highly amused every time I see a tuner car scrape its way across the intersection one door down from my driveway... sometimes they leave pieces of body kits behind, sometimes parts of mufflers... When I drive up my driveway, I know for a fact that I have exactly 1/4 of clearance between my front lower and scraping... since I have to drive up my driveway at least twice a day to the garage, I consider lowering it and scraping to be less drivable.

I'm also saying that you would see WAY more return on investment performance wise, especially in curves, if you upgrade the sway bar versus dropping the car.

If I were to take my car to the track it would be a different story, but if you were to be honest with yourself you'd realize that 99.9% of your driving is done in the real world where high performance handling through curves, worrying about brake dive, and driving under 70 mph where drag coefficient even starts to play a role... I consider that 'drivable'. Also: the actual change in drag coefficient, which is affected by the the shape, is only VERY minimally influenced by lowering the car. There are actually other aerodynamic effects at play, one of which is a very slight reduction in the cross sectional area of the front of the car when the tires are pulled tighter into the wheel wells.

Good engineering is about making compromises in order to seek an optimum solution for all considerations. I consider my Audi to be just about perfect for my daily driver needs... If you take your car on the track, and you don't mind scraping your car every now and then when driving in the real world, then have at it. Otherwise I consider lowering my car to be just a fashion statement, and I won't do it.... Ask me how I feel about the fashion industry sometime, I dare you

 

It is Europa Blue Mica, just like mine, although mine doesn't have that pinstripe on it.

 

I think there's a misconception here of what lowered is. You don't have to slam your ride to where you lose trim pieces on speed bumps, a 1.5" drop will enhance the performance and will rarely scrape.
Also, lowering by just 30mm yields a -5% change in drag...not a bad gain.
As for real world driving: brake dive occurs everyday, every time you brake especially in traffic; being able to handle curves well translates to being able to swerve and miss an obstruction in the road (or the occasional girl on the cell phone that is about to plow her new Tahoe into me).