My A6 avant has been a reliable ride. It is close to having 200K miles on it soon and that alone makes me want to look for something newer. It has the 2.8 12valve auto, yeah I know its not a performance machine, but outside of the normal maintance that I would do to any car it has not dug into my wallet much. I did the TB change around 150K. My question is this: Which engine in the long run will be the easiest to live with? I see the 2.7T's with good gas milage and lots of performace, but withTB projects, double turbo's and manditory syntheitc oil for themto dig into the wallet. Then i see that 04 and newer 4.2's use timing chains, so no TB project and with no turbo's i believe that standard (good) is ok to use, then there is the sound of a v8 . It looks like the biggest draw back for the 4.2 is it's gas mileage, but if there are no turbos or TB projects to worry about which is more reilable and cheeper to drive every day? Sorry for the long post but i'm really concidering another AutoUnion.