Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
I’m not here to say “I told you so”, but when I told you three years ago to snag these while they were still cheap, I wasn’t kidding. Just $28,500 for this example back in February 2020 (right before the world fell apart) seems like highway robbery as that car is probably going to sell for at least $10,000 more today. Today’s example, a 2004 up for sale in New York, has the beautiful Carrara White with just over 44,000 miles. Still grab one while you can? Maybe not at this price.
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the introduction of Audi’s supercar-scaring R8. It really was a bit of a leap for the company which typically mastered unsteer-laden sedans to jump into a mid-engine, rear-biased all-out sports car, but when they put their mind to it they sure did an impressive job. The design built off existing themes in Audi’s show car history such as the Spyder and Avus concepts of the 90s, but the real foundation work was laid with the twin-turbo Lamborghini V10-powered LeMans quattro show car in 2003. Of course, such a crazy concept would never come to fruition, right?
Fast forward only three years later and the road-ready and newly coined “R8†was brought to the market. Architecture was heavily borrowed from existing models within the company’s umbrella; the basic platform was shared with the Audi-owned Lamborghini Gallardo, while the initial engine came from the RS4 in the form of the 4.2 liter, all-aluminum FSI V8. At 414 horsepower, it might not have given a 599GTB driver much concern, but it surely gave the crew heading into Porsche dealers pause.
From the get-go, journalists swooned over the performance and dynamics of the R8. It was lauded as one of the best packages you could buy – even Clarkson liked it! Even before the mega-V10 model rolled out for the 2009 model year, the 4.2 offered blistering performance in a budget (for the market) package. 0-60 was gone in 4.6 second, the standing quarter in 12.5 and it’d do nearly 190 mph flat-out – at least, that’s what Audi claimed. Car and Driver eclipsed the 60 mark in 4.0 seconds in theirs. At around $120,000 new with some options, the R8 was more dear than any Audi had ever hit market.
But there was something even more odd and unique that this car did, or rather, didn’t do, and it’s one of the main reasons I don’t often write them up. It didn’t fall in value. If you bought a well-equipped, V10-engined S8 in 2007, you’d shell out about the same money – $110,000. Today? Less than 20 grand. But the R8 was the first modern Audi not to fall victim to depreciation. Lower mile examples of the early models are still asking over $70,000 – sometimes well over $80,000. Today’s car has the more valuable gated manual gearbox and is in my favorite color on these – Jet Blue Metallic. Let’s check it out:
Defying the odds and most aspects of common sense, a group of fans out there still loves, maintains, and drives Audis from the 1980s and 1990s. Why is this so outrageous? Well, first off, there just aren’t many left. Audi never really broke many sales records here in the US. When we look at this car’s model year, Audi sold about 18,000 cars in total – helped in no small margin by the early launch of the A4. Between 1991 and 1994, Audi averaged only about 13,000 cars per year. Only a very small portion of those were the highest-performance variants with the 2.2-liter 20V turbo inline-5.
As a result, while these cars have cult status among fans, most people still have no clue what they are – as witnessed by the description of this particular 1995.5 S6, which may be one of the strangest I’ve ever come across…
Okay, I’ve been on a run of drop-top BMWs recently, and the Alpina B3 3.0 Cabriolet had me wondering – what’s the ideal spec for an E36 convertible? I think I may have found it. This last-model-year convertible we’re looking at today is a European-specification model, which means it’s got the 321 horsepower 3.2-liter S50 with individual throttle bodies. Great! It’s also got a hardtop, the interior isn’t black, and it’s got the forged Style 24s. Wow! To top it off, though? Yeah, it was run through BMW’s Individual department and came out the other side in Violet Blue Metallic. Oh, and it’s only got 46,000 miles, and seems surprisingly affordable given all these factors. Why? Let’s check it out!
As prices of Porsche 911s seem to be running away and value-for-money on used examples gets worse and worse, it only makes sense to maybe check out what the used Cayman market has to offer. I’ve said many times that I’m not a huge fan of the 718 unless it has a flat-six, so that means backing up to the 981 generation – where you can have all the flat-six you desire. Today’s car, a 2016 Cayman S up for sale in Miami, seems to check all the boxes if you want a really optioned 981 without spending crazy money.
