quattrowatching

[Tom Nas <tnas@euronet.nl>]

Hi all,

Being bored on a Saturday afternoon is no problem here- just drive down to
the local 'exotic' car dealer and enjoy yourself.
So I spent some time perusing his stock- 3 quattros is an unusually high
number for these parts.
First was a 1988 V8 quattro- recent German import, automatic, black
metallic, 200k km, black leather- looking almost perfect but for tarnished
BBS wheels, asking price equiv. $12.5k. He's had this one for a little
under a year now- the relatively high price and crippling fuel consumption
will probably be the cause of that. A nice, straight car, but not for me.

The second was a 1997 90 quattro 10V, 173k km, black metallic with
Speedlines painted black metallic, recent German import, for equiv. $6k.
This car was less nice- lots of dents and scratches, a larger dent in the
driver's door, and the interior looked rather ratty with a worn gearshift
knob and torn driver's seat upholstery. More worrying was a (rust?) bubble
starting under the paint below the passenger side C-pillar. These things
are galvanized, right? What the **** do you have to do to get 'em rusting?
Anyway, it smelt of lots more than 173k km and it looked neglected. Not my
cup of tea.

The third quattro was a real rarity- an original Dutch 1986 200 Avant 10V
turbo quattro. Must be one of about five in the country. It looked great in
dark grey metallic, just a few paint chips and scratches but all there, the
(half-leather: black leather on the side bolsters, tweed-like centres)
interior was perfect including the load cover, it ran beautifully and at
equiv $4500 wasn't overpriced either. OK, it'd done 221k km, but no ticking
or lifter rattle, no blue smoke and it looked well-cared for. A shame about
the multitude of screw holes in the dash (probably car 'phone holders) and
it had none-too-pretty aftermarket alloys with near-new Gislaveds. I was so
interested in this car, I even let the guy make a trade-in offer on mine.
Wrong, his offer was insultingly low. Hmmm... I didn't take it for a test
drive, but I might do so anyway in the course of next week. Does this car
have the dreaded UFOs? They looked like standard discs to me, but I didn't
pay that much attention...

Pros: great-looking car, stupifyingly fast after my 1.8S, lotsa room and
all the gadgets (remote c/locking, a/c, cruise, trip computer, leather
seats, H4/H1 headlights, headlight washers, foglights...)
Cons: two years older than my current car, even (slightly) higher mileage,
fuel consumption, high road tax, insurance, a speeding ticket accumulator,
all these gadgets break, would need OE wheels to look really good.

Still thinking... comments, anyone? This guy has a page on the 'web- never
visited it, but maybe worth a look: http://www.wide.nl/stoutjesdijk

BTW The same lot also contained a recent-import Golf Country. Strange
contraption, that. There was also a 1989 80 1.9E FWD in red (nice, but a
recent German import) and still that $2k '83 CGT. They've cleaned it up a
bit since (no steam on the windows now), but it still looks pretty bad for
the price.

Tom

PS This month's Practical Classics magazine from the UK features a '70s
Audi 100 cabriolet, converted by Crayford. A real rarity (9 are known to
exist in total) and looking quite good, actually.

 _______________________________________________________________________
 Tom Nas                                          Zeist, The Netherlands
 tnas@euronet.nl
 1988 Audi 80 1.8S, mostly Tizianrot metallic, 217,000km

             Madness takes its toll.  Please have exact change.