The Type 44 Audi was a car that was, in many ways, ahead of its time. Aerodynamic and technically advanced, the Audi 100/200/5000 offered automatic climate control, ABS, the normal host of electronics and on board diagnostics you’d expect from a top-flight executive sedan. But what it was best remembered for was a turbocharged motor connected to all four wheels via a manual transmission and all-wheel drive. Early models had twin locking differentials, just like the Quattro and smaller 80/4000/Coupe quattros, but Audi streamlined things in 1989 with the revision to the model line. Sporting new dashboards, new badges, and new BBS wheels, the real change was under the skin where the now worldwide “200” model featured a revised drivetrain. Gone were the twin locking differentials; instead, Audi simplified things for drivers by switched to the Torque-Sensing limited slip center differential, better known as Torsen. In the rear was still a manually locking differential; however, instead of vacuum operation like the early cars, it was now electronic, which allowed Audi to program in a feature which disabled the lock at 25 m.p.h.. While the 200 was a refinement of the early cars, the reality is that most remember it for the last-of-the-run 20V models that introduced the new 3B motor to the legendary platform. But the earlier 10V units in both MC1 and MC2 configuration have proven to be long-lived, well built classics that are rarely seen too:
