How rare is it to find a US-spec V8 4.2 quattro? Well, to put it into some perspective, I don’t think that there is anyone on the internet that writes about V8 quattros more than I do, and the last time I looked at a US 4.2 was in 2018. Yep, that rare.
Audi sold some 2,823 1990 models between late 89 and the end of the model year. Another 527 ’91s were imported. But the 92-up models, which had the 4.2 and light revisions to the interior as well as conventional G60 brakes? Those were scarce when new. Audi sold 270 92s, 170 ’93s, 77 ’94s, and a single model left a dealership as an act of defiance in 1995. Yep, that’s it. Jut 518 were sold in the US, putting it on the rarity scale of models like the BMW M1 (453 produced). And since it wasn’t a BMW M1, but a large German executive sedan that was reasonably complicated, they fell off the radar pretty quickly as the original owners traded them in on the next best thing, while downstream owners struggled to keep the relatively unknown model going. I certainly fell into that camp; owning a just 11-year-old 1993 model at the time, it should have been pretty nice – but in comparison, my now 13-year-old 135i is far more reliable. Car technology changed a lot during that period, as did the availability of parts. Quite a few V8s also gave their lives for others; the motors were popular upgrades for the earlier and more desirable manual models, for example. Yet here we are, with a running V8 quattro from 1993 for sale…so let’s take a look!