Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
If yesterday’s low mileage S6 Avant wasn’t enough fast wagon love for you North American fans, I have just the cure. It’s easy to forget that our neighbors in the Great White North have managed to enjoy European model legal status for a full decade more than that U.S. fans; thus, it’s not abnormal to see some wild Euro cars come up for sale. Kijiji is nearly as much of a tease as Ebay.de, and today is no exception as a rare RS Blue 1995 RS2 Avant with lower miles has popped up for sale:
I believe in every C4 post I remark that it’s pretty rare to find good example. That’s especially true of the Avants, since even though they enjoy a coveted status amongst Audi fanatics there were only around 300 examples imported originally. Considering that the newest (and the oldest) examples are some 20 years of ski trips old, the likelyhood that you’ll come across a good example is extremely low. Of course, I say that, and last month a remarkably excellent Avant popped up. A one owner silver example with lower miles turned up, and immediately I contacted my family member who has been on the lookout for one. “This is your one chance” I effectively said, since it was the only near perfect silver model I’d seen for sale post-2000. While it didn’t work out in that case, here we are less than a month later; with an even better example of an incredibly rare car:
While I’m sure we’ve all had moments of regret, I’ll share one of mine. It involves a crazy story of how close I got to a owning Quattro. Several years ago, my then brother-in-law was really into Toyota pickup trucks from the 1980s, and seemingly was buying every single one on Craigslist. He called me,quite excited, one day saying that he needed a hand picking one up not far from where I lived. As a bonus, he told me, the guy owned an “old Audi race car” that I’d like seeing. This somehow turned into me driving to my parents home to get the car trailer, then back to the guy’s home to pick up this Toyota. The wheels were locked and I had to use the tow straps as come-alongs to tow the wreck of a pickup onto the trailer. Once done, sweaty and annoyed I turned my attention to the boxy silhouette that lay behind where the truck had been. The red and brown stripes were unmistakable in their journey over the flared arches and up over the angular C-pillar; it was an Audi Quattro. And, it was in a horrible state; sitting in weeds, the composite hood was warped and full of holes; no engine lay under where it haphazardly lay. Closer inspection revealed that the flares were larger than normal, too – but it was a bit of a wreck. Proudly the owner told me how he was going to restore this car to it’s former glory as an SCCA ProRally car; I nodded in the knowing way that it was unlikely under his ownership to turn another wheel judging by the pickup I had just dragged onto my trailer. I left, shaking my head a bit that it was a car wasted.
Fast forward a few years and I got a call from my brother-in-law; he had heard from the seller of the pickup who wanted to get in touch with me about the Quattro. I told my relation that I wasn’t really in a place to pay for another car – especially one which looked like that car did. But a call to the owner revealed he was in a spot of bother and needed to get rid of the car. If I simply turned up and dragged it out, it would be mine. Hurriedly, I jumped in my truck and was off to pick up the trailer. About 3 miles from my parent’s home, a loud “BOOM” greeted me when leaving a stoplight. The truck still moved but the transmission was obviously not right. I got underneath to find a large hole in the transfer case; so began my complete hatred of General Motors. I called the owner, disappointed, telling him I couldn’t make it. He, too, was disappointed, but put a call in to another potential party who turned up to pick up the car. I was about 20 miles from classic Audi Quattro ownership, and it slipped through my fingers. True, it was probably a mixed blessing – the car needed a full restoration and would have been a bit of a money pit, and it wasn’t an original factory works car but one that had been converted – but running across a listing like today’s similarly converted car makes me wonder what it would have been like:
The 1993 Audi S4 we listed last month has been updated slightly; original orange corner lights have replaced the aftermarket clear corners and the seller has dropped the price to $5,500.
When Audi launched the A4 Avant with the B5 series, it was a bit of a trump card for the small wagon enthusiast. True, the Volkswagen Passat had been available in 5-door form for a few generations, and it VR6 form it was quite entertaining. However, quality of the pre-B5 chassis Passats wasn’t the best, and all-wheel drive had only been available with the Quantum for a few short years in the late 1980s. Audi had offered its unique large Avant platform in both 5000/200 and S6 form, but they were pretty expensive relative to the small cars the company offered. The A4 Avant continued on for through the B7 chassis we saw yesterday; a serious improvement in looks over the rather plain looking B6. When the B8 launched, initially I thought “There goes Audi again, following the formula of making everything bigger”. The B8 was a LOT bigger than the original A4 had been; in fact, park one next to an original A6, and the B8 A4 is dimensionally it was only slightly smaller. There was one key difference, though. Sure, the A4 had been stretched in every direction – but most importantly, you’d find that the wheel base was now the best part of a foot longer than the early Audi platforms. Visually that shortened the notoriously long overhangs of the Audis and offered more legroom to the occupants. Anyone who has ever been in the back of a B5 A4 would certainly appreciate that. Amazingly, too, the new A4 was lighter, and thanks to revised suspension geometry, new and more advanced computers and a torque-laden 2.0 turbo motor, it felt and drove considerably better than any of the previous generations had, too. It even looked really good in my mind. It was an instant success as previous generations had been, making one wonder even more why it went away:
