It’s always with a bit of sadness that one of your friends posts a long love affair for sale. It’s understandable; people change priorities or move on, but when you know the amount of time and effort that has gone into a car you can’t help but hope that the next owner will appreciate even a small percentage of what it took. I’ve known Scott from Coventry Motor Car for nearly 20 years; writing that, it’s hard for me to believe or quantify. I still remember driving into a the parking lot of Mystic Aquarium to meet the stranger who had posted some Audi 90 Sport quattro wheels for sale – there in the lot was a gorgeous pearl white 90. That car, and a few others that Scott has owned along the way, have passed on, and his current project is now on the block. I must say, whatever the car that he has been working on through the years, the presentation has always been top notch – and it’s easy to see the attention to detail looking through the photos of this stunning Avant. Proving age is just a number, Scott’s work restoring this Avant to pristine shape has resulted in one of the best all around examples we’ve seen for sale in recent memory:
Author: Carter
Last week’s E34 M5 Double Take left many feeling a little cold; sure, they were both neat cars, but the general consensus was that both were probably at least a bit (or a lot) overpriced. While finding another good M5 in the marketplace can be difficult, if you’re willing to forgo the M badge – or at least part of it – there are great options in the E34 market. One of the neatest is arguably the Canadian market M540i. Only 32 of these special 5 series were produced, all with a 6-speed manual 540i basis. But the special M5 details that were added created a defacto M car that is very special indeed. The M Adaptive suspension was fit, along with the floating M5 brake system featuring 13.6″ front brakes hidden not well under the equally massive 18″ M Parallel wheels. Outside there was M tech pieces front, sides and rear, matched inside by the M cloth. So exclusive were these M540is that there were only two options offered; a CD changer and ASC traction control.
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1995 BMW M540i on Kijiji
11 CommentsToday’s 10K Friday is something a bit unique; instead of a normal comparison between similarly valued cars, I’m going to chart the development of the venerable Audi inline-5. While, due to a dearth of examples, we won’t go back to the very early days of the I5 in the U.S., I’ve rounded up some of the more notable configurations that the engine appeared in the U.S.. Since, save some exceptions like the legendary Quattro and RS2, nearly every used Audi with this motor fits the under $10,000 limit (or comes close to it), that gives us the opportunity to see Audi’s continual technical changes to the inline-5. Though not as memorable as BMW’s inline-6 or Porsche’s flat-6, this motor was extremely important to the company nonetheless and was a character-defining attribute of Audis for nearly 20 years. So, let’s see how they kept it relevant from the 1970s into the 1990s:
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1987 Audi 4000CS quattro on Craigslist
4 CommentsYesterday, a reader suggested that 2016 might be the year of the E28. It’s not a bad prophecy to make, after all, since we’ve seen all 1980s cars increasing in value, and the E28 is certainly a fan favorite. Handsome styling, good build quality, more than adequate performance and classic tail-out BMW handling make it a practical choice for a classic BMW. Over the past few weeks, we’ve looked at some neat options outside of the natural choice M5; there was the Euro-bumpered Dinan 3.9 1988 535i that everyone seems to think is overpriced. Yesterday I also checked out a 1983 Alpina B9 3.5, one of my favorite unsung heros of the E28 lineup. Nate looked at a ultra-clean all-original 1985 535i that just sold for $12,000. Paul considered a lightly modified 1988 535is that everyone loved but failed to find a buyer. And even last month we looked at a rare option, when Nate checked out a right hand drive M535i. When this 533i popped up, I was almost certain we’d seen it before; it was a near clone of a car we looked at back in 2012, but it’s not the same car. Is this a good potential candidate to express your E28 love, then?
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1983 BMW 533i on eBay
7 CommentsWe’ve had the pleasure of looking at some pretty cool European and Japanese market Alpinas lately, and another two popped up that were worth considering. One is a B9 3.5; we’ve seen a few of these from the same seller, and this one looks as exceptional as the seller’s previous offerings. Interestingly, where the seller previously had listed the cars on reserve, this time they give us an entry price. The second example is a bit more of a mystery; an Alpina liveried E12, it looks more like an assemblage of parts than an actual original Alpina car. Let’s start there: