Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
The 1995 BMW 850CSi we featured two summers ago is back up for sale on Bimmer Forums. The car has covered just under 1,000 miles in that time, but besides that fact, this has to be one of the best higher mileage E31s I’ve seen in some time. Along with its contemporary, the Porsche 928GTS, these big cruisers are bringing strong money these days. Will this one meet the ask this time around?
As the 25-year importation rule ticks on, unleashing cool new (to us) cars each year, somehow the Golf Country never really crossed my mind as one to wait for. Now that this New Jersey outfit is bringing them in with some regularity, the reality has me fully enticed. El Niño has blessed the PNW with some snow and trips to the mountains are starting to be planned. Taking the M5 up there sounds fun (especially now that he wears mudflaps) but is clearly a bad idea. So I could borrow the household Forester XT to slide through all conditions, but what if I had a Mk2 VW that was just as capable? If these low-mileage Golf Countrys keep coming up on eBay, I might have to clear out yet another parking spot in the driveway for some AWD lifted hatchback fun.
As a young man, I spent countless hours dreaming of blasting down the Mulsanne in a Rothman’s 962 Group C car chasing Hans Stuck. But I was not alone; the dream of driving the legendary and most successful Group C car was that of many across the world. Some of those who dreamed had the means to make it happen, too – and in one of the strangest prototype twists I think ever, multiple road going versions of the 962 saw the light of day from different tuner companies. There was the DP Motorsports version – effectively, just a race-going 962 with some tread on the tires. There was the “Derek Bell Signature Edition 962, too – which looked the part but built on chassis numbers alone with a GT2 motor. Then there was the ex-Porsche racer Vern Schuppan’s version called the 962CR. The most radical, it looked like a 962 had spent a drunken night with a 959. There was also the very interesting tale of the Dauer 962 – ironically, turned into a road car so that it could exploit a loophole in the rule book to be turned back into a race-winning car at Le Mans. Indeed, for several years during the supercar boom in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it seemed that a new version of a road going 962 came out every few months. But the first of all of these was from reviled tuner Koenig Specials, who in a departure from their typical formula of “just add Testarossa slats everywhere” introduced a thinny veiled race car for the road:
The really pretty (and very expensive) Venetian Blue Metallic 1987 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe we featured in early November is back up for sale – not surprisingly – and it’s even seen a reduction in its asking price! Ok, at $155,700 relatively speaking the price reduction is completely negligible as this remains a potentially market-setting 3.2 Carrera. That is, if anyone bites on this price. I suspect it won’t go anywhere in the near future, but it does make the other very high priced Carreras in this seller’s stable seem well priced in comparison. Maybe that’s exactly the point.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Audi seemed a bit lost in terms of direction of its motorsports programs. With the death of Group B following the development of the monster S1 E2 Quattro, Audi turned to the 200 to lead its racing brigade from Group A rally to the crazy Trans-Am effort. That would continue with the introduction of the V8 quattro, campaigned in the DTM in 1991 and 1992 before being banned. But focus would return to the smaller chassis cars in the early 1990s, with Audi introducing a line of Super Touring 80s and the most memorable of the bunch, the flame spitting Audi 90 IMSA GTO racers. Though few remember the 80 STW, it was run extensively in the DTM and Italian Super Touring series and paved the way for the later A4 STW that would dominate many international touring classes in 1996. But there was a lesser known development, that of the ROC engineered 80 quattro Supertourisme. Built by ROC in 1991 on behalf of Audi Sport for the French Super Touring class, it was unlike any of the super touring cars Audi produced:
