If you were looking for a sporty small executive sedan in 1994 and opted to buy an Audi 90, something was amiss. You would have waded through the miring scandal of “Accelerategate” and the media implication that your Ingolstadt-born all-wheel drive wonder would suddenly attempt to go full throttle (preferably, when your husband was opening the garage door….). Okay, so you must have had some understanding of physics, logic, spacial awareness and could differentiate a square pedal from a rectangular pedal and your left from right. That, in and of itself, isn’t all that odd. But then you still bypassed the BMW dealer to look at the Audi; a move which probably surprised even them. After all, in 1994 the E36 chassis was still relatively fresh and won nearly every magazine competition it was entered into. In comparison, 1994 was the penultimate year for the B4 quattro as the new A4 was already on the horizon, and though it had received a refresh in 1992 the now B4 chassis didn’t really offer much new technology or refinement over the outgoing B3. It was dressed up with some newer clothes, wheels, and a slightly more powerful motor, but it was still numerically at a disadvantage to the BMW on several fronts. The V6 produced 172 horsepower – about 17 less than the inline-6 in the E36. That V6 also hauled around more weight than the BMW did, so the Audi was predictably slower in every measure, too. The weight and larger displacement meant it got worse gas mileage. And for the pleasure of this slower, thirstier, older chassis, you paid less, right? No – walk into your dealer and select the 1994 90CS quattro Sport as shown here, and you were going to pay over $35,000 – about $5,000 more than the base price on a 325i sedan. Is it any wonder that Audi only shifted a reported 773 of them that year?
