hidden by the blackout paint along the bottom of the car.

Let us hope the blackout paint is not included on the production models. Let us also hope that Audi puts the vertical silver panel ahead of the rear wheels that was part of the concept car.

I was a fishmouth hater, but I've come to realize what I really hate is the motor hanging so far over teh front axle.

The next gen of cars, starting with the A4, is said to remedy that. Fix that and you can put a beak on the front, a giant shark fin on the roof and a rubber whale-tail on the trunk for all I care. but put the motor behind the front axle, or at least most of the motor.

Although yeah for the lesser models it becomes obvious and the new platform should be a welcome remedy.

Its engine is mounted backwards, I am not sure but I don't believe that is the case for the S4.

Furthermore it uses aluminum panels.

I think the fact that it has the same weight distribution as the S4 is misleading because all it means is that most of the weight is up front, but I suspect that less of the weight is actually in front of the front axel in the RS4 compared to the S4, but this is not obvious when you don't dig deeper.

The fact is in the RS4 there is no way of feeling the front weight. That much is pretty much universally agreed by all reviewers.

But again, in the A4 it would be probably prohibatively expensive to do this, and moving it back can't be a bad thing.

Being mid-engine should obviously provide a very neutral platform for the R8.