A funny thing has been happening recently: I’ve begun to be attracted to the 996. The general design is one I never was a fan of during production and I can’t say those feelings ever changed. Yet here I am unable to take my eyes off of another 996. I do think there are some caveats. It is the slightly altered bodywork of the Turbo, the C4S, and the GT3 that I find very good looking. The standard 996 design still leaves me cold. And the interior is still mostly terrible. But I do find the peculiarities of the design and the way those come through on certain models to be quite alluring. They aren’t clean lines and I actually like that. The 997 certainly fixed much of this, and the 991 extended that even further, but perhaps it all became too clean. Perhaps following upon the beauty of the 993 Porsche thought they needed to make things a little uglier, a little more interesting. I don’t know, but I’m starting to think it worked.
Month: February 2018
Update 2/12/18: A year after we originally featured it, this ultra-rare S6 Plus is back with 1,000 more miles for $500 less. It’s still a steep price for one of these super-S models, but it’s pretty hard to find them at all, never mind like this.
Audi’s sleeper sedan squared up against some seriously stiff competition in the early 1990s, and to be frank, though it was innovative it came up a bit short in the power department. In turbocharged 20 valve form, the 2.2 liter inline-5 cranked out 227 horsepower and 258 lb.ft of torque. That was impressive by 1980s standards, but in the early 90s you needed to carry a bigger stick. BMW’s E34 M5 brought nearly 100 horsepower more to the party at 311 with the revised 3.6 (and yes, it had more torque than the AAN, too), but Mercedes-Benz really crashed the party with the E500, whose M119 held a full 100 horsepower and 100 lb.ft of torque advantage over the Audi. You could be as clever as you wanted, but a 50% power disadvantage was a bridge too far to cross for the legendary 5 pot no matter how many wheels were driven.
The writing was on the wall, and Audi decided to offer an upgraded V8 model alongside the S4 in the rest of the world. Starting in October 1992, you could select the same ABH 276 horsepower 32V 4.2 liter all-aluminum V8 in the S4. The switch to S6 saw the introduction of the revised AEC, which gained 10 horsepower for the 1995 model year and would continue to be the standard V8 in the S6 until production ended. But the big new was the 1996 introduction from Audi’s skunkworks quattro GmbH of the Plus model.
The Plus upped the ante quite a bit with the reworked AHK V8. Though it displaced the same 4.2 liters and had the same 32 valves, the breathed on motor had 322 horsepower and 302 lb.ft of torque. Power was matched with upgraded suspension, brakes, wheels and some small “Plus” badge details – this was still the decade of stealthy performance, after all. Few who look at this model would see anything other than a C4 sitting on slightly larger wheels. But for those in the know, this was one of the most potent super sedans (and wagons!) of the 1990s:
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1997 Audi S6 Plus on eBay
8 CommentsAfter seemingly going a while without seeing one it now appears Turbolook 911s are all coming out of the woodwork. I’ve posted a couple that I particularly liked, one of which specifically because it was a coupe as those still aren’t coming around very often. It is still the case that most of those we see are the earlier, and slightly less desirable, models with the 915 5-speed transmission. There are fewer of the later G50 transmission models with the ’89MY naturally leading the way in rarity.
But here we have one of those later models. It’s not a Coupe, but still has plenty of appeal in its own right: a paint-to-sample Marine Blue Metallic 1987 Porsche 911 Carrera Targa with the M491 package and 81,713 miles on it.
CLICK FOR DETAILS: Paint-to-Sample 1987 Porsche 911 Carrera Targa M491 Turbolook on eBay
5 CommentsNormally I would post this car as one of our Motorsports Monday posts, but since this listing is set to end on Monday that wouldn’t be terribly effective. So today will have to do. Regardless, I expect it still will be available after Monday as well.
This model should need little introduction, but for those unfamiliar with them this is 1 of the 45* U.S. Edition 964 Carrera Cup cars Porsche imported in 1992. The idea was that these cars would all compete in support races for the CART series. Alas, sponsorship for the series couldn’t be secured and these cars were left without a purpose. Porsche, however, had other ideas, converted them to road legal specs, and sold them to customers anyway. In most ways these served as a replacement for the Carrera RS, which the US never received. As the ad below notes some of those were returned to race trim with full roll cage and stripped interior. This is one of those cars.
*A quick about the numbers: there were 45 Carrera Cup cars imported for the race series, so I’m not quite sure what the 1 of 25 mentioned in the ad is in reference to. Perhaps the number of cars reverted to race trim?