For my personal cars, I like them as unique and as special as possible. Naturally this can be difficult to achieve if you don’t have an unlimited budget and certain cars can be hard to find, but this is something I try to seek. Of course that doesn’t mean wrap the car in gold leaf, and we can all agree that certain color combos aren’t exactly beautiful, but you know what I mean. Today’s car, a 2001 Porsche 911 Turbo, is right in my wheelhouse when it comes to being unique. It certainly looks like a normal black 996 Turbo, which is true until you open the doors.
Month: October 2021
Once in a while, a truly special package comes along and is seemingly gone in the blink of an eye. The TT RS was that package for Audi, marrying the fantastic 8J chassis with the outrageous 2.5 liter turbocharged inline-5 and a 6-speed manual. With 360 horsepower on tap driving all wheels and a sticker price below $60,000, it was Audi’s answer to the BMW 1M, and it was a good one. Though the driving experience perhaps wasn’t as “pure†as the Munich monster, the TT RS was a potent alternative that was on par with the competition, if not better. It was a Porsche killer at a fraction of the price, and the same rings true today:
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 2012 Audi TT RS on eBay
5 CommentsWhile they’re no longer the largest, fastest or most luxurious executive sport sedans on the market, the D2 Audi A8/S8 does still offer enthusiasts a substantial package for a very unsubstantial amount of money. While I’ve spent a lot of time previously covering my favorite S8 models, the normal A8 and stretched A8L tone down the sport but also come to the market at an even more budget-friendly price. To maximize your value, look towards the A8L models. These were expensive sedans back in the early 2000s, though today’s prices really dwarf the MSRP of $67,200 for the lang model. Still, corrected for inflation that is about $100k in buying power today – far from a pittance.
This all brings us to today’s A8L. Let’s say you really wanted one, but you didn’t want anything wrong with it. Well, that’s apparently what happened with this particular example; 2Bennett Audimotive gave it a more-or-less ‘open checkbook’ mechanical overhaul to the tune of $40k, replete with a few S8 modifications. Impressive? Not as impressive as the asking price today, so put the coffee down.
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 2003 Audi A8L on Hemmings
6 CommentsI’m sure that occasionally (or more likely, often) when discussing current color pallets offered by manufacturers I sound like a broken record. The new model is, generally speaking, that 95% of those that purchase the top-tier models for any given manufacturer will select one of three colors: black, gray or white. It reminds me of a book my wife bought for our son for Christmas one year called This Bridge Will Not Be Gray by Dave Eggers. It chronicles in a tongue-in-cheek manner the development of the Golden Gate bridge – reportedly, according to the text, the first orange bridge in the human history. “No bridge had ever been orange. Orange was silly. So most of those involved figured the bridge would be gray. Gray was serious. Gray was safe†the book states about the bridge, and I feel like a fair amount of people buying these near-exotic cars feel the same way. But in the book, Eggers talks about how one of the bridge’s designers – Edward Morrow – decided gray would be the wrong color; that if he was going to have to look at this bridge every day, it should look like something special. The person who ordered this Audi RS7 felt the same way: