Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
Back in April I took a look at a rare FIA homologation special not too many people know about – the 450SLC 5.0:
The 107.026s were very limited production cars, with a total of under 3,000 produced in all (1,636 450SLC 5.0s, along with 1,133 500SLCs manufactured in 1980 and 1981). So it’s really neat to see them come up for sale – even when they’re not in perfect shape. Today’s car will need a lot of love to get back to its glorious roots, but is it worth it to do so?
Developed by BMW Individual, the ZHP Performance Package added $3,900 to the price of your 330i model. That sounds like a lot, but you got some meaningful upgrades. M-Tech body pieces adorned the car front, sides and rear and blacked out trim replaced the chrome. So too were M-branded special Style 135 18″ wheels, with tires to match the width of bigger brother M3. Lower and stiffer suspension was met with more negative camber, special reinforcement, and revised control arms. The engine was upgraded too, with unique cams and a revised engine map resulting in 10 more horsepower, but the ZHP was more than 10 hp quicker off the line thanks to a shorter final drive and a 6-speed manual borrowed from M.
These are fan favorites, and can draw really big bids – indeed, some sell for more than M3s. Let’s take a look at this Imola Red example and see where it falls:
No, you’re not reading that incorrectly.
While US Volkswagen Sciroccos were sold as base or slightly upscale Wolfsburg Edition trim, in Europe there were up to five trim levels – the base CL, the slightly nicer GL and GT models (which got you fog lights, nicer upholstery, alloy wheels, and a five-speed manual gearbox), or the top-tier GLi and GTi models. Like the original GTi, this got you special trim, a higher-compression 1.6-liter engine with fuel injection, a close-ratio five-speed transmission, vented disc brakes, and front and rear anti-sway bars. We didn’t get a full-on performance model of the Scirocco until the 16V, so it’s neat to see one of these imported:
Defying the odds and most aspects of common sense, a group of fans out there still loves, maintains, and drives Audis from the 1980s and 1990s. Why is this so outrageous? Well, first off, there just aren’t many left. Audi never really broke many sales records here in the US. When we look at this car’s model year, Audi sold about 18,000 cars in total – helped in no small margin by the early launch of the A4. Between 1991 and 1994, Audi averaged only about 13,000 cars per a year. To give us some perspective on that, let’s look at Ford’s F-Series trucks. Even in the midst of pandemics, global parts and labor shortages, and inflation, Ford has managed to move between 45,000 and 84,000 F-Series trucks from showrooms each month of 2021. But that’s the Ford truck, you say, not a luxury car. Fair enough. Let’s look at the least popular Volkswagen on offer – the Passat sedan. Volkswagen is on track to sell more of those here this year than Audi sold total cars in 1995, and they’ve already outsold the ’91-94 years by a safe margin with two months to go.
The secondary part of the problem is Audi’s insistence that we don’t need parts for our 25+ year old cars. It’s not that Audi doesn’t make said parts – they do, and sell them through Audi Tradition. And judging by their recent partnership with Ken Block, Audi’s interested in showing off its historical cars here in America. But they refuse to sell you parts to fix them.
This means, of course, that enthusiasts are left to fend for themselves, creating groups of faithful fans that buy, trade, and sell parts amongst themselves, tricks and tips, and…of course…really good examples for sale that pop up. So let’s dive in to this late-production Magnolia S6 Avant:
This B5.5 sold for $9,600 on October 18, 2021.
There’s always been a fascination for me with the W8 Passat. Not only did Volkswagen take the B5 and B5.5 models upscale by offering the Audi-based chassis, but they pioneered the new engine configurations that would be the top-tier mills in the Passat. Truth told, the “W†configuration had been around for a few years before it finally entered into the mid-sized sedan and wagon. It was first floated in the Bugatti EB116 16/4, but really came into the minds of enthusiasts with the Volkswagen W12 Nardo concept. Now in appropriately named W12 configuration and powering all four wheels, the 600 horsepower mid-engined Volkswagen captured headlines with its 200 m.p.h. 24 hour run and Italdesign-penned Group C for the road looks. While the Nardo was the prototype for what would become the Veyron after some heavy revisions, the W12 would be an exotic engine only powering the most elite of the VAG range. However, Volkswagen also launched a smaller version of the engine for 2001 in the Passat. It was the first introduction to U.S. customers of the W configuration that would later appear in Bentleys, the D3 Audi A8L, and the Phaeton. There was something unique about the Passat’s package, though. First, you could option the mid-ranger in long-roof 5-door configuration. More importantly for enthusiasts, you could select a manual 6-speed, too. The combination of these items coupled with the stratospheric price tag of the model meant very few sold. But briefly, until the new S4 launched in 2004, this was the most powerful manual VAG product you could buy in the U.S.:
