Audi RS4 Cabriolet : Sam Moses takes a farewell top-down tour

Man, it's lamentably too easy now to say: They just don't make convertibles like this any more. And I'm not talking about my father's 1956 Chrysler New Yorker convertible, peach with white leather upholstery, that he hit 130 mph in down in Mexico, with my mother riding shotgun and calm through it all.

No, I'm talking about the 2008 Audi RS4 Cabriolet. They made 300 of them last year, and now this rare and exceptional automobile is history.

I was blessed to get six final days in a beautiful blue '08 Cabriolet, all 420 horsepower and six speeds of it, from San Francisco to Los Angeles via Laguna Seca, Big Sur and the Pacific Coast Highway, Morro Bay east to Taft across the California prairie and into oil country, south to downtown LA and Little Tokyo at night, then the OnCars office in Aliso Viejo not far from the ocean again, and Auto Club Speedway at desert's edge in Fontana, where hot Santa Ana winds blew lightning-sparked infernos across the rugged brown mountainsides.

Big week, for a ragtop. RS4 goes out with the kind of bang it deserves.

It was a long and lustful goodbye kiss to this hot piece of steel. We went past second base. How can you not feel passion for a car?

Scenes from the road:

Sunday night, returning after dark from Laguna Seca to Salinas, giving a ride to two mechanics from Team MER, just crowned as repeat champions of the 2008 Playboy Mazda MX-5 Cup Championship with driver Eric Foss. Ronnie Swyers, an old buddy, and Myron. Drop them off at their motel and get back on 101 North to the next exit. Accelerate onto the freeway into the night, revving the Audi to 8000 rpm redline in second gear, and then third, which is 100 mph. Ronnie and Myron are still in the lobby, and hear the deep V8 piercing midnight behind the motel. They go, "Is that Sam in the Audi?"

Yes! What else could make a glorious sound like that?

It's been suggested in reviews that it's hard to justify the $82,000 price of the RS4 Cabriolet, when for another measly 30 thou you can get an Audi R8 supercar. Yes, but what if what you want is a four-seat convertible? But here's the real thing: even with the same engine mid-mounted in the R8, closer to the driver's ears, it doesn't sound like the RS4. Nothing does: not the 6.3-liter Mercedes C63 AMG, nor the BMW M3 V8, so damn silky it sounds more like the inline six. Only the Corvette ZO6, using all of its 427 cubic inches, matches the RS4 for exhaust-note rumble.

Next morning, in the parking lot of the Safeway in Carmel:

"I'm jealous of that car," says a lady about 70 years old. "I want it."

"Four hundred and twenty horsepower? Is that what you want?" I ask her,

"No, I just want the color. That's a gorgeous blue. They don't usually let little old ladies have 420 horsepower, do they?"

Sure they do, I say. She gets into her standard silver Audi A4, thinking about it.

Later that lazy Monday afternoon, ripping in fits and starts down the Pacific Coast Highway, past Big Sur. Frequent roadblocks for repairs from mudslides after last summer's big fires. But I won't be frustrated; make lemonade from lemons. At each roadblock, maybe a 20-minute wait, when we got through, I'd stop and wait some more, smelling and hearing the air at the edge of a cliff over the crashing ocean, as I let the line of cars get miles ahead of me. I'd take off when I saw the first car in the next line coming. That way I could drive as fast as I wanted, the road all mine.

The fog had long lifted, the sky was blue. The best possible car for the day was under me. The sign said curves, Next 74 miles. If that doesn't make you smile, you're on the wrong website.

Even with all its beef, the 4.2-liter engine sometimes feels like a Japanese sportbike motor. When it comes on the cam at 5500 rpm you want to shout in excitement. Not that you need to wait, with 317 pound-feet of torque. Explosive acceleration, plus brakes that are always there.

I do wish, though, that my feet and the pedals could have gotten along better. Heel-and-toe downshifting seems to be a specific, if not subjective, thing. It's like sex, all about the fit. With some cars it's perfect, every time from the first time. With the RS4 I struggled to downshift into second smoothly, with a good blip and coordination between the release of the brake and clutch. I wish I could tell you why.

I'd buy the car anyhow, and figure it out.

Small fires are still burning on the steep hillsides. Smoke wafts into my nostrils speeding through the open air. Firefighters' tents in the campground on the beach near Lucia. James Taylor singing as loud as the sound system will allow, from the new sessions CD I'd bought that morning at Starbucks in Salinas. The RS4 engine sing-sing-singing even more beautifully. Staying in second gear, revving to redline and then backing off and braking for curves, the engine sounds like a diving Warbird.

Sweet is the right word for the feeling when you hammer the RS4, but the wrong word for the sound. It's way too strong to be sweet.

Seventy-one miles from San Luis Obispo, high-speed bends with good visibility now, 100-mph spurts on straight stretches between them. Some cars need high-speed curves to stretch their legs, others need tight curves to show their dexterity, the RS4 is happy and at home with either. Sport mode doesn't make the suspension too stiff even over the bumps.

Eight thousand revolutions per minute is a beautiful place to upshift into fourth gear. I guess I said that already.

Hundreds of sea lions and a handful of kitesurfers just north of San Simeon. Into Morro Bay, still 170 miles from Los Angeles, but it's 4 p.m. and rush-hour traffic on 101 has arrived. No worries, just head east over Route 58 for another 100 miles to Interstate 5 through isolated cowboy country. The road is not like the coast highway; it's better.

But uh-oh, we've run out of time. Come back on December 1 for that story.

One difference, though. By then we'll be in the all-new 2009 Nissan 370Z.