Warning!
We have 15 years of archives. Links older than a year may have been updated to point to similar cars available to bid on eBay.
This site contains Ebay partner affiliate links, which may earn us a commission at no additional cost to you.
Today’s Jetta hits a lot of chords for me: Mk1, brown, adorably original, and some feel-good history. It’s been owned by the seller twice, once after he bought it from the original owner, then again when he bought it back after an unappreciative snot didn’t like the manual car his parents got him for college. It’s covered over 180k miles (the odometer broke a little while back) but still wins at shows because it’s in beautiful shape. Cars like this little survivor are my kind of classic – no fancy, climate-controlled exotic, just a loved example of a great, simple car.
Towards the end of the 1960s, Volkswagen was planning for the eventual demise of the Beetle, but it still wasn’t clear exactly the direction the company would take. There were a few fits and starts with front-engined, water-cooled models and developments on the tried and true rear-engine, air-cooled model, such as the 412. Volkswagen even was looking at a mid engine layout as flüssig magazine detailed a few months ago in their piece on the EA266. The Beetle sedan soldiered on for a while, though, with the last one rolling off the assembly line in Germany in 1977. The convertibles would cease production in 1979, with Beetle production continuing on in Brasil until 1996 and Mexico until 2003.
This 1969 example for sale in Illinois has been lovingly restored in a pretty Diamond Blue, having only passed through the hands of two owners.
While wide-body 911s have always been popular the design seems to have really hit its stride with the 993 and every iteration that has followed has looked tremendous with those wider rear fenders. Don’t get me wrong, the earlier turbos and other special 911s looked quite good as well, but once the 911 took on the curvier shape of the 993 that wider rear began to look just right. I’d even hazard to say that the narrow-body cars now look slightly out of place; they’re too slim. The Carrera 4S showcases those extra curves extremely well while providing the added benefit of all-wheel drive to help keep things moving in the intended direction. As with most 993s the market has remained strong for these cars, especially in colors we come across less often like this Aventurine Green Metallic 1996 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S, located in Connecticut, with 58,009 miles on it.
I got to laughing the other day during a National Lampoon marathon on television when the memorable “Family Truckster” came onto the screen. The inclusion of that heavily ornamented and modified car in the movie was truly a stroke of genius, but once again a sad reminder that many of the wagons that previously were available to us are gone, replaced by crossovers, “GT”s, or SUV/SAV vehicles. Of course, because of this you don’t have to go back very far in time to find great deals on the last generation of premium 5-doors. Today, with that in mind, I’ve rounded up a set of all-wheel drive sporty wagons to consider – which is the winner?
The other day I wrote up two M5s, questioning whether the E34 was a smart decision when the E39 offered more performance and luxury at a lower price point. That’s not the end of the story, though, because the car that created a sensation and helped to once again redefine the category has dropped to historic lows in value. The Audi RS6 wasn’t the first car to offer a V8 in the mid-sized luxury segment, but as with the original Quattro they upped the game by offering not only a V8, but twin turbochargers and all-wheel drive to the mix. The result was a hunkered down Autobahn warrior with 450 horsepower on tap. It was immediately the top dog, and being turbocharged it was capable of even more outrageous levels of power. As with its AMG and M counterparts, it was also quite expensive as the newest piece of kit in 2003; at nearly $90,000, not many could afford the super sedan. But now a little over a decade on, the Audi RS6 has predictably gone through a few generations of ownership and has dropped substantially in value. In part, that’s because the Audis of this generation have some known faults and keeping the twin-turbocharged V8 running in top condition can be an expensive proposition. But if you want to go fast and have one seriously menacing luxury car on the road, it’s hard to argue that anything can do it better for less money today:
