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In Support of my recent Quattro Criticism

I recently wrote up a dubious Ur-Quattro with a 20v turbo swap but some significant cosmetic work needed for a shocking 17 grand. I didn’t feel great criticizing the seller so harshly, it’s not my nature, but the ad gave me all the wrong signals, supported by an overconfident asking price. I looked a little deeper over on eBay and found two reasonably-priced Audis that, with a little legwork, could provide the basis for a cheaper, less sketchy project than the $17k UrQ with more blemishes than a non-showering teenager.

First up, the base car. A 1985 Ur Quattro in impressively clean condition after a strong 205,000 miles sitting around $7.5k on eBay. It still runs well, but that can’t last too long with that amount of miles.

So once those 200k miles catch up with the UrQ, you’ve got this 1990 Quattro with only 84k miles but a bunk transmission/differential to be the donor. The seller just wants to get rid of it and has it on sale locally for $2,400. Besides the mechanical gremlins the car is in beautiful condition, and could be parted out to the owner of a less-pretty Quattro for at least the initial cost.

Throw the 20v from the ’90 into the UrQ and you’ve created one great, low-mileage Quattro swap from two that are struggling, AND with a beautiful Coupe Quattro roller to sell. You’ll have to find a good Audi guy to do that swap for you, but hopefully it will live up to the old adage about VWAG swaps being akin to playing with legos. All told you’re about $10k invested in the cars, which gives plenty of room to get the swap done before you get anywhere close to the $20k investment needed for the sketchy one posted earlier.

It’ll take some legwork, space, and time, but so would getting the red one in good shape, and you’ll have the confidence of having overseen the swap yourself.

-NR

One Comment

  1. syed
    syed January 19, 2011

    hey, i dig your blog….very cool—-however i think you need to learn a bit more about quattros before you start advising on them. 205k miles is pretty much nothing for an audi……providing they have fairly decent maintenence done—-the 5 cylinder engines are race proven and very robust. Additionally, the price of urquattros are going up quite quickly due to their increasing status as a ‘legend’ of the 80s….i know because i’ve been shopping them myself. Sure you can find one for $8k and you can find one for $16k….but with cars like this, the maintenence history and originality are big issues; as many of them underwent modifications and unoriginal transformations which duly reduce their resale and appeal to the audi enthusiast. cheers!

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