Press "Enter" to skip to content
Warning!
We have 15 years of archives. Links older than a year may have been updated to point to similar cars available to bid on eBay.

Tag: MC

This site contains Ebay partner affiliate links, which may earn us a commission at no additional cost to you.

1987 Treser Audi Super 5000

Ruf. Alpina. AMG. Treser.

Wait. Treser?

Yes, Walter Treser, creator of the most outrageous Audis in the 1980s probably deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the most famous tuning firms in the 1980s. After all, it was Walter who helped to create the Audi Quattro in the first place – but he didn’t stop there. Far from it! He built the first 250 horsepower Audi, the first convertible modern Audi, the first off-road inspired model to wear four rings. He also pre-dated Audi’s Avant in turbocharger form and stuck a huge chunk in the middle to create the first long wheel base out of Ingolstadt to compete with the Mercedes-Benz SEL. And when he was done with all of that, shortly before he folded to economic pressures in the early 1990s, Treser’s firm made a crazy mid-engine aluminum roadster, too. For a brief rundown of his more famous models, check out the article I wrote about them!

Despite the innovative technology and designs, finding Treser models in the U.S. today is very rare. Heck, finding just parts for a Treser is very rare. So when a whole Superpfeile model comes up for sale we should take notice!

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1987 Treser Audi Super 5000 on eBay

5 Comments

1983 Audi Quattro

For as long as I can remember, the Quattro community has been a tight-knit group. Unlike many other Johnny-come-lately brands, models or trim packages, the Quattro bred life-long devoted fans. To them, it was the be-all, end-all, and they have religiously kept track of every single of the 664 originally imported that they can find. Some have been lost along the way or brought back to the homeland, but the seller here – one of that devoted Quattro community – has begun to restore this one to former glory:

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1983 Audi Quattro on eBay

8 Comments

Motorsports Monday: 1984 Audi Coupe GT

Far less famous than its wide-hipped brother and mostly unknown to most U.S. customers, the B2 Audi Coupe was available with quattro all-wheel drive in other markets. It shared nearly all components with the sibling 4000 (90) quattro, including 4×108 wheel pattern and 256mm front brakes – items that were also on the U.S. spec front-drive GT. So, one would assume it would be pretty easy to “swap in a quattro”, as the internet posts usually start. Of course, those individuals who start the posts best be wearing flame-retardant clothing, as they are immediately inundated with responses that kindly (or not so) explain the difficulties inherent in this project. You see, everything aft of the firewall on the all-wheel drive floorplan is different than the two wheel drive units; indeed, as I’ve pointed out previously, even the two wheel drive floorpans were different between automatics and manuals. That means to recreate a rest of the world Coupe quattro, you need the floorpan from a 4000 quattro mated to a body of a Coupe GT. This, of course, makes no sense financially as the countless hours involved eliminate all but the DIYers – and even a fair chunk of those with the talent give up on the project. Yet, it apparently didn’t stop the builder of this rally car, who not only swapped the body, but went one step further and dropped in a turbocharged motor and the brakes and wheels from the big-brother Type 44 chassis. The result is a budget Ur-Quattro rally replica without the flare of the original…or, at least, it was a few years ago before it was parked:

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1984 Audi Coupe GT on eBay

Comments closed

3 C3: Audi Type 44 Roundup

A sleek aerodynamic design, modern electronics, luxurious appointments, all-wheel drive and available small displacement turbocharged engine. This is the recipe that nearly every luxury automaker has taken on in the past few years, but in the 1980s there was only one available car in this configuration – the C3 Audi. Okay, it’s taken the best part of 30 years for that blueprint to be the go-to design, and the market has changed in many ways since then, both from a buyers prospective and from the regulations that govern cars. But to say that the Audi Type 44 was an advanced car in its day was no leap – it really was about as technically sophisticated as cars got in the mid 1980s. Under the aerodynamic and efficient body lay a rally-bred drivetrain which was robust enough to carry the torch after the Group B cars had extinguished. Indeed, it was the Audi 200 quattro (5000CS quattro in the U.S.) which went on in 1987 to win Audi’s next major rally – the Kenyan Safari Rally – where the luxury sedan went 1-2 with Hannu Mikkola and Walter Rohrl. Not satisfied, Audi then took the large sedan racing; first in 200 quattro form in the Trans-Am championship, then later in the modified D11 V8 quattro DTM car. It was an unconventional race car which was very successful – something Audi excelled at, historically. But nearly extinct are the road-worthy versions of the early 5000 quattro; the complicated pattern of electronics and hydraulics systems, originally its strength, being the downfall of many. Today I have the three rarely seen variants of the 5000 that were available in the mid 1980s; 5000CS quattro, 5000CS quattro Avant, and 5000S quattro. Which would you want to take home?

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1988 Audi 5000CS quattro on eBay

5 Comments

1986 Audi 5000CS Quattro

People who have owned Audis have stories about their Audis. Those that love them have stories about conquering snowbanks, hundreds of thousands of miles accrued, or the extreme value they provided in the used luxury market. Those that hate them recount the countless times they broke down, or the semi-ridiculous nature of those breakdowns; the steering rack fell off, all of the electrics died at once, or they rusted before they were even purchased new. In the world of used Audis, there just doesn’t seem to be any ambivalent middle ground; people love them, or hate them. While I fall into the hippie love-fest for most 1980s Audi products, I’ll admit that I have my fair share of horror stories that would probably scare off less devoted fans. I owned two big-body Audis; a 1989 200 quattro Avant, and a 1993 V8 quattro. In many ways, the 1989 was identical to this 1986 5000CS quattro underneath and outside, but the 200 had several updates to the interior. But the horror stories? Sure, there are plenty of those. There was the time on the Mass Pike outside Sturbridge – leaving a toll booth, the car was running great and I gave it the full boot out of the gate. Full out to redline, grab the next gear and right back on it – I must have been making an impression on the people as my land yacht wagon aimed its nose decidedly at the moon. When I looked in the mirror to see how impressed they were, I saw nothing – except white smoke. Lots and lots of white smoke. I pulled over to see that an oil feed line to the cooler had popped off and I had emptied the sump as quickly as the pump could pump at redline. Sweeeeeet. Then there was the time I looked at confused at the voltage gauge which read over 14 volts. Then it read 11. Then 14 again. Then over 14. I was over a hundred miles from home, and the subsequent drive home required me to steadfastly keep my eyes on the gauge and balance the electrical load by turning on and off all of the electrical items (which still worked) to keep the alternator from blowing up the battery. How about the time that the brakes stuck on; a common problem with collapsing brake lines that don’t allow the pressure to release. Driving down 95 in the low speed lane at 50 m.p.h., my wife turned to me and asked why I didn’t speed up a little bit. “I’M AT FULL THROTTLE”, I frustrating replied. Then there was the time on the way to a winter driving school that the car threw an alternator belt on 24 North and I had to drive back to a friends house at 4 in the morning with no lights. And that doesn’t even begin to recount my stories of the V8 quattro…these are the sort of stories that build character in enthusiasts or drive them away completely. And when you’re talking about the Type 44, most have been driven away; a complicated car which was hated so much thanks to bad press in the 1980s, Audi nearly withdrew from the U.S. marketplace. To say that finding a 5000CS quattro in the condition of this car today is rare is an understatement:

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1986 Audi 5000CS quattro on Cars.com

2 Comments