Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
Your dollar doesn’t go very far if you want a Mercedes-Benz station wagon. I’ve expanded on the value of the wagons in the past, and that seems to be holding true in almost every example. However, if you really want a long body with a three-pointed star, you can find a good buy if you search hard enough or adjust your standards low enough. This 2006 E350 Wagon up for sale Tennessee is a little bit of both.
The success of the Audi A4 really opened the U.S. market to a whole lineup of cars we might otherwise not have been privy to. Undoubtedly the best way to consider that is by looking at the C5 A6 lineup. But first you need to remember that prior to its 1998 launch, the C4 reigned in 1996 at the top of the Audi sales ladder for the U.S.. However, the number of configurations you could get was shockingly small. You had the choice between front-wheel drive and quattro, and again between sedan and Avant. That’s it. Following the drop of the 2.2 liter turbocharged S6 for our market in 1995 and the 5-speed manual from the A6 lineup for 1996, your only “choice†if you wanted a mid-sized Audi was to begrudgingly select the rather stale 2.8 liter V6 rated at 172 horsepower and mated solely to a 4-speed automatic. It was competent, but boring. Actually, that sentence sums up the end of the C4 run here pretty well – and the market recognized that, snapping up only around 10,000 of the models each year.
Turn your attention to the C5 lineup and you suddenly see the array of options opened by sales success. First to launch was the heavily revised sedan for 1998. Now with the 30 valve V6, horsepower was up to a more respectable 200 and the transmission gained a gear, though it was still automatic-only. The Avant carried over from the C4 lineup unchanged for ’98, but the new sedan was enough to double sales of the A6. ’99 launched the new Avant and with it, again a surge in sales by 50%. That allowed Audi to bring over some more exciting options – the 2.7T, the Allroad, the S6 Avant, and this car – the 4.2 quattro:
It certainly seems like the first-generation Cayenne GTS is here to stay as a desirable vehicle. That is rather evident seeing the prices compared to the standard Cayenne and Cayenne S of the same years and things really start getting crazy when talking about a nice GTS with a 6-speed gearbox. The automatics certainly always trade less, but still not what what would I would call “cheap.” Still, if you could buy an SUV around $20,000 and not lose anything in depreciation, would you?
Wow. That is all I can say about this one. This of course being a 1995 Porsche 911 Turbo finished in Violet Blue Metallic over a Florence Gray leather interior. It is bold both inside and out as you can see, and for some, an ultimate 911. The 993 Turbo has held steady around the $100,000 for the nice examples with some miles, but this one up in Belgium has just under 27,000 miles. Needless to say, this car is not around $100,000. Not even close.
Back to big Audis! The early 1990s were, as I’ve described in previous posts, a period of change for the Ingolstadt firm as they closed down production on the Type 44 to introduce its new replacement, the C4. That led to a dizzying assortment of models from the one chassis. There was the aforementioned 100 and 100 quattro. You could move up to two turbocharged models, too – the 200 Turbo gave you 165 horsepower through the front wheels, and the new-and-only-for-91 in the U.S. was 200 20V quattro. Europe and the rest of the world got even more options; production lasted right up through 2006 in parts of China, where they even made a crazy long-wheel base 4-door convertible version of the Hongqi.
But the top of the heap for the U.S. market was a derivative of the Type 44, the D11 chassis. Of course, that was Audi’s foray into the top-tier luxury market with its new all-aluminum 32 valve double-overhead cam V8. Body revisions to the front and rear along with flared fenders made the V8 quattro seem like a completely different car to the slab-sided 100. V8s had, and have, serious presence. Big news, too, was that for the first time Audi was able to match its all-wheel drive quattro setup with a new 4-speed automatic transmission.
For die-hard Audi faithful, though, for a short while you could still opt to row-your-own with the 240 horsepower 3.6 liter V8 singing to your right foot. These manual V8 quattros are legendary because of their rarity and that they are the only car Audi brought to market with twin Torsen differentials. The combination of a more rearward weight bias, big and instant torque from the V8 and those clever diffs made for one of the best driving experiences in a classic big sedan from Audi, and they’re exceedingly rare to find:
