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Month: September 2015

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Tuner Tuesday: 1995 BMW 318ti Club Sport Supercharged

What’s the perfect commuter car? Well, that varies by your definition of commuter, how far you need to drive and how much traffic you encounter, and what your goal is – do you want high mileage, or perhaps you want extreme comfort and isolation. But I’d like to think that a fair amount of our readership would love to have a dual purpose car. It would be something that wouldn’t be a collector-status car, but yet one that was unique and not often seen. It would combine comfort and affordability. While some would opt for automatics, I’m sure a larger percentage would choose to row-their-own boat. Fuel mileage, while gas is cheap now, would probably still be a consideration, as would maintenance. And finally, when the traffic cleared and there was a empty bit of road, most of us like to squeeze the pedal down that bit further and be rewarded by and entertaining push in the back. That’s a difficult grouping of characteristics to achieve in one package, but I’d like to suggest that this 318ti might just be the car.

The Club Sport was the answer to the question that effectively no one was asking in 1995; depending on the source, BMW sold a reported 200-300 of them in 1995 only. What the option 9530 got you was a 318ti hatchback that had been breathed upon by BMW Individual. Added were 16″ sport wheels, M3 front bumper, rocker trim and mirrors and a special rear bumper. But it was more than an appearance package, because it also received a M-tuned suspension, special steering wheel and shift knob and uniquely trimmed Millpoint M-cloth sport seats. The seller of this car has brought the performance up to M levels, though, with the addition of a PSS9 coilover suspension, double spoke M3 wheels and supercharger to the M42 inline-4:

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1995 BMW 318ti Club Sport on eBay

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1997 Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet

Not everyone likes a flashy car, but I think even those of us who prefer to enjoy our winding roads in less noticeable fashion can still appreciate the vibrancy created by a sports car draped in a pastel color. And perhaps it is precisely that flash that explains why this Blue Turquoise 1997 Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet only has 9,471 miles on it. Either way Porsche has consistently made a habit of making its cars available in these sorts of colors and they will always attract a good deal of notice, both on the streets and at cars & coffee as well as on the second-hand market. For second-hand cars the issue as always is just how much is such a color worth and I think this auction attempts to stretch those bounds to test their limits. I love seeing these cars come up for auction: they’re bright and interesting and easily stand apart from the myriad others on the market. They bring a splash of joy to the droves of silver, black, and white we come across so regularly.

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1997 Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet on eBay

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Motorsports Monday: 2012 Audi R8 LMS Ultra

If you were a gentleman racer over the best part of the past decade and a half, there was only one natural choice for your steed; the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car was, and still is, the most popular choice for factory supported full race cars to buy brand new. But we can thank the success of the Cup formula for an entirely new lineup of racers, from the Lamborghini Super Trofeo to the track-oriented Laguna Seca Mustangs. In the FIA mandated GT3 field, the advent of the Pro/Am designations have similarly diversified the field from the standard Porsches to new entrants, from the seemingly outrageous Bentley Continental GT3 to the Aston Martin Vantage GT3. But while those names may seem like newcomers on the international circuits, the reality is that both the heritage of Bentley and Aston Martin lay exactly with those gentleman racers. No, the real newcomer to the block is the Audi R8; a name steeped in Le Mans history but a chassis built for the street, the GT3 effort resulted in the popular and sonorous R8 LMS Ultra, as Audi shifted its focus from showcasing quattro all-wheel drive in racing to the lightweight technology incorporated into the new mid-engined racer:

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 2012 Audi R8 LMS Ultra on Race Cars Direct

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1986 Mercedes-Benz 300SL 3.2 AMG

Even after all these years which I’ve been involved with GCFSB, a car will come across sometimes which I had no idea existed. Such is the case with this 1986 300SL with an AMG tuned 3.2 liter inline-6. First off, the 300SL is rare on US shores, as we only got the 560SL in our market from 1986 through 1989. Secondly, someone went to the trouble of optioning an R107 with an AMG engine and not much more to denote its bump in horsepower. The ultimate sleeper, then? You decide…

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1986 Mercedes-Benz 300SL 3.2 AMG at The SL Shop

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2007 Audi S6

I have a bit of a funny relationship with the C6 style Audi A6. On the one hand it is a good looking car that bestowed upon us the option of having a motor with Lambo DNA in a luxury sedan. On the other, it added heft to the most beautiful Audi design of all time, and it didn’t come to our shores in S6 Avant form. For a number of years I have simply found the latter unforgivable, especially since Audi did offer us the C5 S6 Avant. However, Audi crushing my dreams is nothing new, they’ve been doing so with reckless abandon for a number of years now, and frankly their more recent choices have turned me off to the idea of ever getting a new one so long as I’m living in these United States. No manual S4, no manual R8, no hatchback A3/S3?! I understand why these decisions make good business sense, but they’re a blatant FU to the core Audi audience that helped the brand achieve the success that they’re currently enjoying. While I find some of the new cars pretty, and their performance impressive, I can’t help but think that they’ve lost some of the inherent traits that made them special in the past. An RS7 will blow the doors off pretty much anything, and look damn good while doing it, but you’ll need to shell out $120k to have the opportunity to do so. The lower level Audis have just become uninspired, bland, devoid of emotion. That’s why instead of getting a new S4 like every other 30 something that just got a promotion, you should consider picking up an S6 with a 10 cylinders under the hood that only live to please.

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 2007 Audi S6 

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