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Edit: Thanks to several readers for pointing out several details that prove this Cayenne is a Turbo, but not a Turbo S. Only 450 horsepower, then!
It’s been a few weeks since my last 10K Friday entry, and I wanted to get something together for the impending snow New England is once again expecting. To remind us of the terms of the comparison, I’m looking for themed cars around $10,000 (give or take, we’ll see later). I try to generally find the newest cars possible, figuring that for many these will be a daily driver. In this case, I was looking for performance all-wheel drive cars that offered year round practicality with a touch of sport. So lining up the best I could find from Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche gives us an interesting amount of diversity for your hard-earned dollars. Today we have two sedans, a hatchback, a wagon and a S.U.V. to contemplated; which is the winner?
As we saw last week, higher-mileage M5s are starting to get pulled upward. Shredded front seats, a dirty engine compartment, and lost history were the main gripes with last week’s, but it still got snatched up locally, indicating the seller got something close to his $15k asking price. This one has a more complete history as it belonged to the seller’s father, but its story includes several missteps. The most-referenced in the ad is a decent-but-not great respray after a hailstorm. Next are the recovered seats – better than having them torn up (I guess) but the black piping makes them look cheap. Mechanically and electrically, however, it appears sound, running strong at a mileage where many receive rebuilds (though for some unknown reason the top end was already rebuilt at 125k miles). With no reserve and sitting just over $10k, this could be a good chance at driver for someone who doesn’t care too much about originality.
Over the past couple months, we’ve featured a few E34 and E39 540i sedans with the M-Sport package. While the E34 540i M-Sport was an extremely limited edition model that was akin to the late model M5 we didn’t get, the E39 540i M-Sport was kind of an M5-light. You were down about 100 horsepower versus the M5, but if you wanted a sporty V8 5 series with an automatic, this was your only ticket. Thankfully, this Dinan tuned 540i M-Sport for sale from our reader Hunter is equipped with the 6-speed manual, giving the new owner a lot of the same pleasures of the infamous super sedan from this era.
I’ve recently had the pleasure of writing up a few very cool Alpinas thanks to a new seller who seems to be flooding the market. Today, unlike the Japanese seller on eBay, there are two B10s that are already located in the Americas – Canada, to be specific, where it’s a bit easier to get these European market cars imported. So here we have two iterations of Alpina’s vision of the 5-series; in the E34, it’s a 1991 3.5/1 that was very similar in many regards to the B11 3.5/1 I featured Tuesday. On the newer end of the spectrum is the 1998 B10 V8; a huge jump in power to accompany the newer chassis. Which is your flavor? Let’s break down what you’d get with each:
