Yesterday I had the pleasure of heading out into the hills of Connecticut to Coventry Motorcar to enjoy SFest 2015. It was a beautiful day…
2 CommentsAuthor: Carter
If you were looking for a sporty small executive sedan in 1994 and opted to buy an Audi 90, something was amiss. You would have waded through the miring scandal of “Accelerategate” and the media implication that your Ingolstadt-born all-wheel drive wonder would suddenly attempt to go full throttle (preferably, when your husband was opening the garage door….). Okay, so you must have had some understanding of physics, logic, spacial awareness and could differentiate a square pedal from a rectangular pedal and your left from right. That, in and of itself, isn’t all that odd. But then you still bypassed the BMW dealer to look at the Audi; a move which probably surprised even them. After all, in 1994 the E36 chassis was still relatively fresh and won nearly every magazine competition it was entered into. In comparison, 1994 was the penultimate year for the B4 quattro as the new A4 was already on the horizon, and though it had received a refresh in 1992 the now B4 chassis didn’t really offer much new technology or refinement over the outgoing B3. It was dressed up with some newer clothes, wheels, and a slightly more powerful motor, but it was still numerically at a disadvantage to the BMW on several fronts. The V6 produced 172 horsepower – about 17 less than the inline-6 in the E36. That V6 also hauled around more weight than the BMW did, so the Audi was predictably slower in every measure, too. The weight and larger displacement meant it got worse gas mileage. And for the pleasure of this slower, thirstier, older chassis, you paid less, right? No – walk into your dealer and select the 1994 90CS quattro Sport as shown here, and you were going to pay over $35,000 – about $5,000 more than the base price on a 325i sedan. Is it any wonder that Audi only shifted a reported 773 of them that year?
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1994 Audi 90CS quattro Sport on Orange County Craigslist
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Did someone say fast 5-doors? Amen! The bells on the Church of the Heavenly 5 Doors are ringing this Friday, and I’ve rounded up a unique quartet of very fast and very colorful wagons to consider, each around or below $10,000. We’ve got 5 turbos, 25 cylinders and 1,200 horsepower worth of people carriers here – which is the winner for you?
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 2002 Audi S4 Avant on Denver Craigslist
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Last night, I watched a “Throwback” Motorweek which reviewed the then-new top-tier twin-turbocharged Japanese sport coupes. It pitted the height of the market cars against each other – the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4, the Toyota Supra Turbo, the Mazda RX-7 and the Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo in a head to head. It’s hard to believe only a year or two after that segment aired, all of those cars would have disappeared from the U.S. market. While vestiges of them have returned, we’re still generally left without that glut of fast Japanese GT cruisers that were available in the early 1990s. It reminded me of another segment that all but disappeared around the same time; the sports economy coupe. True, cars like the Scion TC live on, but remember when there were 11 or 12 different small coupes you could buy? Like the “HYBRID!”s of their day, each offered shouty colored badges about what made them special; a DOCH here, a 16 valve there, or if you were really, really cool, you had a TURBO badge somewhere on your car. Preferably, multiple places. I remember fondly my friend in high school’s Plymouth Sundance Turbo; it might as well have been a Ferrari to us. While Volkswagen never went that far, they did continue to offer their version of a sport coupe, the Scirocco, through the late 80s. Still sporting its Giugiaro-inspired but Karmann-stolen all-angles design proudly, the Scirocco had a bit of a mystique as all Volkswagen coupes had that it was the best of the class, even if by the numbers it wasn’t:
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1987 Volkswagen Scirocco 16V on eBay
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Here at GCFSB, there’s a running joke that ties in with the Saturday Night Live “Behind the Music: Blue Oyster Cult” skit featuring Christopher Walken. We’ve just gotta have more wagon around here, and I’m happy to oblige. Today’s oblation to the GCFSB Church of the Heavenly 5 Doors is an interesting blip on Audi’s Avant radar; the short-lived B6 Ultrasport package. Available in either 3.0 V6 or 1.8T configuration, the Ultrasport was introduced in 2004.5. It took the normal Sport Package A4 with either a 6-speed manual or 5-speed Tiptronic transmission in either sedan or Avant form and added the S4 door blades, a European rear bumper and a quattro GmbH designed front bumper cover. RS4 “Celebration” wheels were added, bumping the rolling stock from the standard Sport 17″ to 18″. Those wheels lay under the lowered fenderline, suspended by the 1BE sport suspension that was 20mm lower than standard and 30% stiffer. The package also included a stiffer 18mm rear sway bar and an upper stress bar in the engine bay, which held a standard version of each of the motors (220 horsepower with the 3.0 V6 or 170 horsepower in the 1.8T). Inside, the 2005 Ultrasport gained a 3-spoke S-line steering wheel and the only interior color offered was ebony, accented with perforated leather shift knob and aluminum trim. It was as close to a S4 Avant as you could get without actually opting for the V8: