Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
If the Coupe Quattro John sent in earlier wasn’t really the Audi I’d choose to build or buy, the S6 he found certainly was the opposite. Last week I wrote up a clean S6 6-speed converted car. It was lovely in just about every detail, but there were a few niggles that I would have done differently. Enter today’s S6; in 2003-only Aqua Blue Pearl with the optional Alcantara seats, this stunning S6 is just about perfect in my book and just like the silver car features a 6-speed swap:
A few weeks ago, our reader John sent me a listing on Craigslist for this car. I immediately laughed. It’s not that the car was modified to look like an RS2 in the front and resprayed. On the surface, that’s pretty common and overall it looks reasonably done. It’s not that the car didn’t get a matching engine transplant; the unappreciated 20 valve normally aspirated 7A inline-5 is still there. It’s not that they didn’t do a 5-bolt conversion with larger brakes. No, what made me laugh was the color – Sprint Blue Pearl. That’s a B7-spec color, and while to non-Audi nerds it may not matter, it’s the wrong color. Nogaro Blue, technically, would also be the wrong color, since the RS2 was oft-anointed in the special shade of RS Blue. Now, technically that color seems to be the same color as the later B5-chassis shade, but nevertheless the person who repainted this car in the spirit of the RS managed to be 3 generations off in color. It’s that kind of attention to detail that always worries me about modified cars:
The good week for Audis continues with another car that’s frankly rare to find in reasonable condition anymore; the B4 Audi 90 quattro. The 90 was a bit long in the tooth in 1995 and slated for replacement by the updated A4. However, squint a bit and you realize that outside of the reshaped bumper covers the A4 shared many design cues with the B4 Audi. It’s a handsome car, and like the ’95 A6 I wrote up the other day it’s extremely competent. The V6 was coupled to the venerable but updated quattro all-wheel drive via a 5-speed manual transmission. While not the fastest car out there, the B4 focused on more luxury at a time when all of the major manufacturers seems to be backing away from sport just a bit. You won’t confuse this car with an M3, but that said it’s a fair bit more quiet, refined and quicker than a 4000 quattro. However, the car was a veritable sales flop compared to the 4000 – Audi only sold about 3,330 of the B4 90 quattros in the U.S. in total, compared to the nearly 16,000 4000 quattros sold. Rare? You bet:
While low mileage, pristine condition Porsches almost seem cliche, finding an Audi with not much distance covered just doesn’t happen very often. When it does, it seems to inevitably be a model that no one is particularly excited about. That’s unfortunate, because often those models are quite competent performers, indeed. Growing off of the Audi Space Frame Concept from 1993, the A8 was the replacement for the short lived V8 quattro. Although the V8 had only been in production for a few years when the ASF was built, the Type 44 chassis was already quite old so a replacement was fitting. And Audi really outdid itself, with a modern, clean design based around lightweight aluminum technology. Underneath, the initial A8 didn’t offer revolution but instead built on the technology incorporated into the advanced for the time V8 quattro. Over its life, though, the A8 became a world-class leading sedan with steadily increasing technology and power output. For the most part, though, what most people remember are the post 2001 changes; introduction for the U.S. market of the long-wheel base A8L and sporty S8. That’s unfair to the often unloved and seldom seen early models which were very similar and quite competent in their own right. Running across a 1999 A8 with only 50,000 miles is rare enough that you might not see it again in the U.S. and offers you the opportunity to get into a nearly new top flight executive sedan:
I had a serious amount of nostalgia when I came across this listing; if finding 1980s Audis has become somewhat rare these days, finding ones in good nick has become even more so. But in this case the nostalgia stems from this particular model in this particular configuration; an Alpine White with Brazil Brown sport cloth 1985 4000S quattro. The reason why is that it’s about as close to the first car I owned as you can come. I had this car in this configuration, but a 1986 “CS” model. Outside of the “C” on the rear, the only other change was the addition of the third brake light at the base of the rear window. I didn’t start out looking for an Audi at all, and to be honest when I was 18 the B2 was virtually unknown to me. I tried – and failed – to buy a decent 2002 tii; an exercise that ultimately led a car-selling friend of my father’s to take me under his wing. He claimed he’d find the perfect car for me, and shortly thereafter I found myself paying for a 4000CS quattro without any real knowledge of it. It had about the same mileage as the car shown here, and generally was in good shape. Over the next few years, it would carry me on many adventures; long highway cruises to see friends, trips to the mountains to ski, my first track event, countless drives sideways through the snow – it became as much as friend as a vehicle. Despite that, the day came when I had to move on; owning both a Coupe GT and the 4000, I chose the former as the car to keep and the 4000CS quattro drove away. I’ve often dreamed of finding another in the shape mine left me in. And though it requires quite a bit of squinting due to the unreasonably small photos in this listing, I think this car just about fits the mold:
