I'm shopping for a 2002-2003 S8 and I keep seeing all of these cars that are selling from dealers for significantly less than what Edmunds states is the True Market Value. I always thought TMV was pretty accurate (seems to be for new cars anyway). Any thoughts?

I've seem many examples, but I've linked to one below - it's a 2002 S8 with a $25,120 asking price and even appraising it with zero options and "Clean" condition the TMV is $26,896 for trade-in, $29,444 for private party, and $31,704 from a dealer. This particular car doesn't have a free CARFAX report available, but I've seen this sort of discrepancy even for cars that have one owner and a spotless record. I was eying one 2003 with 22K miles and one owner that was on the market for weeks after I started looking at it and it was going for $6K under TMV.<ul><li><a href="http://www.cars.com/go/search/detail.jsp;?tracktype=usedcc&amp;searchType=22&amp;pageNum ber=0&amp;numResultsPerPage=250&amp;largeNumResultsPerPage =0&amp;sortorder=descending&amp;sortfield=PRICE+descending &amp;certifiedOnly=false&amp;

not a car that only ran for 3 years.

...with them.

Alsoalso values down due to both perceived maintenance woes to come or REAL ones - and / or both. Unless you're 'connected' to some sort of Audi 'scene' (AW, etc.) and / or had Audi's before and know 'what you're getting into' the preception in the market (for good reason!) is to be frightened of these. Recall: drains that don't / seals that DO heh heh..., etc.

Alsoalsoalso (sadly) because of SOOOOOOOOO many f'n TURDS out there. People basically SUCK - seen more than not that have been thrashed and trashed.

Dan, shoot me an email - your handle / user account does not provide yer addy...

put 20k-40k miles on it, do the absolutely minimum servicing on the vehicle and then unload it. You won't know that directly (other than looking at service records), which makes the vehicle a likely liability for the purchaser if it's not under warranty.

Bottom line, one shouldn't buy a car, no matter how affordable or undervalued it seems, only on the basis of it's devaluation or price-delta to TMV or other tables, if one can't service that vehicle properly. We get often those posts from people who got a "great deal" at $10k for an A8, only to bitch later about needing to put in $5k-$6k for repairs. If you want a cheap, reliable $10k vehicle, mate, get an Accord.