Audi recently launched its first RS6 Avant sold in the United States using an ad campaign that featured many of the five-cylinder cars from its past. Those quirky Quattros were what solidified Audi’s name in racing history books, but they also brought about the biggest downturn in Audi’s history with the unintended acceleration scandal.
The year 1987 may have been the first without the mighty, flame-spitting Sport Quattro cars competing in the WRC’s spectator killing age of Group B, but sometimes slow cars are more fun than cars that feel like they want to kill you.
Take this 1987 Audi 4000CS Quattro for example. With maybe slightly more than 100bhp, the speedometer struggles to break into triple digits, but it never struggles to put a smile on my face when I grip the weathered, small diameter Momo suede steering wheel, twist the key and hear the raspy, uneven rattle of the 2.2-liter, Bosch CIS-fed five-pot purr to life.
It is raw and unfiltered. The ride is harsh, the engine makes many different noises both good and bad all the time, there is no air conditioning, some of the windows don’t work, the exhaust is loud and you can feel the engine vibrating through the pedals.
The factory headlight switch will light on fire if not relayed and left on too long. The shifter bushing will eventually fail, leaving the transmission stuck in whatever gear it was in when the three-decade-old part fails. And in order to get a quality replacement shifter bushing, you’ll have to find the guy on Facebook who 3D prints replica bushings out of a hybrid material with the hope that you can convince him to make you some.
Maintaining these cars isn’t necessarily difficult in the sense that the work is challenging. What makes it difficult is the lack of available quality replacement parts like bushings and other small wearable parts. These cars were never as popular as American muscle cars or even Japanese economy cars, which makes knowledge of fixing these cars hard to come by.
Audi launched Audi Tradition to remedy this problem, but the vast majority of the owners of these older Audis in the United States are unable to order items through Audi Tradition unless they buy several-thousands of dollars worth of parts at one time.
Sourcing parts from former eastern bloc countries and downloading PDF copies of repair manuals from foreign servers are common practices to keep these cars on the road.
The engine in this tarted-up Volkswagen Quantum sedan was produced only one year after Audi set a world record for four-wheel drive cars at Talladega Superspeedway when Bobby Unser drove a 25-valve five-cylinder Audi 5000 to a top speed of 220mph with an average of 206mph. The engine block in Unser’s 5000 and the one in this 4000 are basically the same parts besides the moving bits inside.
While this square predecessor of the Audi A4 doesn’t make enough power to blow anybody’s doors off, I would pick it up for a fun afternoon drive any day of the week.
The steering is sharp enough to put the car exactly where you want it and enough feedback makes its way through the wheel that you can figure out exactly which wheel just lost grip and why. The brakes are itty-bitty tea saucers that somehow manage to heave this brick’s speed down lap after lap at Blackhawk Farms. Although the lack of speed might have something to do with that.
The shifter leaves a lot to be desired if I’m honest. After installing the second of third shifter bushing, it seems to be better than ever, but I’m sure this whole process would’ve been much easier if Audi actually sold a new shifter bushing for these cars. The one on the car came from some guy on the internet who 3D prints them out of some sort of material that holds up better than what 034 Motorsports uses. I still miss fifth gear regularly, but luckily I have a lot of time to think about the next gear when accelerating because of the aforementioned power supply.
When driving the 4000 at a brisk pace on the road, it feels sharp and nimble. The front of the car points exactly where you place it and the feedback through the Momo wheel missing the yellow on paint on one of the “mo”‘s tells you exactly what’s going on without feeling twitchy. At higher speeds, the body roll present on most older Audis is managed by a set of Ground Control coilovers, which give the car a harsh ride, but not as harsh as the broken H&R springs they replaced.
This car still understeers like a pig in a muddy field if you try to just rip the steering wheel in one direction expecting the car to follow your commands like an obedient German soldier. This brick of West German steel will plow straight through whatever you’re trying to avoid if you don’t learn to work with it rather than against.
With the basic modifications this 1987 4000CS Quattro has combined with the inherent character in vintage Audis and all five-cylinder powered cars, it has become one of my all-time favorite cars to drive and experience. The exhaust note alone was worth the trip to Virginia to buy it if you ask me.
This was the first older Audi five-cylinder car I ever drove, and when I drove it, I saw that they were good. I bought myself a 1987 Audi 5000CS Quattro a short while after first experiencing the 4000.
While the 1987 Audi 4000 might be a fancied up Volkswagen Quantum underneath its four rings (one example: 4000 models were fitted with a plastic-fiber radiator shroud while Quantums got cardboard from the factory), the 1995 Audi S6 Avant is a bespoke Audi nothing like any Volkswagen model of its time.
This particular UrS6 Avant is different for any other Audi UrS in several distinct ways. Some differences came about from purposeful modification, others from necessity and some are just bits of character showing through the weathered 25-year-old paint.
The current owner of this car lost a coin-flip and ended up paying a whopping $8 for the whole car, running and driving. While I will go into more detail of this car in a future article, this price changes the perspective on any foibles the car has from character flaws to character traits.
Where the 4000 is a rough, angry, loud and gutless brick, the UrS6 Avant is a soft, charming, sweet, everyman rocket sled that will surprise any stock WRX owner at a stoplight.
Besides the 17-inch BBS wheels, the only cues that give this wagon’s fury away are the collection of aftermarket parts manufacturer stickers on the quarter windows and the deep, low rumble of the exhaust with just a hint of turbo whistle reminiscent of a diesel truck at idle.
The handling can be described as wooly compared to any sporty car built in the last decade, but the 2-ton long roof can still be coaxed into a nicely controlled four wheel drift with the right amount of trail braking. But without rain or snow, there just isn’t enough power from the 2.2-liter engine to keep the Bridgestone Potenza S-04 Pole Positions spinning, even though the UrS6 five-cylinder has twice as many valves, electronic fuel injection and a crossflow cylinder head compared to the earlier Audi turbo-fives which lacked all of these modernities.
Besides the fairly sticky tires, the UrS6 has a hard time spinning its tires under power because the mechanical Torsen limited-slip center differential automatically sends up to 75% of the engine’s power to whichever axle has more grip with a neutral 50-50 distribution when none of the wheels are slipping.
The center differential in the 4000 can only be switched between fully open and locked. It cannot automatically distribute power to the axle with more grip.
As a winter beater, the 300,000 mile UrS6 Avant with roughly 50 zip-ties holding the front bumper together, a hardwired battery tender and block heater, a spray painted hatch from an A6 and a battery roughly the same size as the average F-150 battery is pretty much perfect.
Even with a set of Continental all-season tires, this barge was able to extricate itself from parking spots on the streets of Milwaukee with snow halfway up the doors.
Between early February and June I covered 18,000 miles and never had to shovel myself out of a parking spot.
However, I did once request to be pulled out of a ditch by a passing snowplow after I accidentally buried the silver pig in snow up to the windshield while trying to avoid that same snowplow. The Continental all-seasons weren’t quite adequate in that situation.
I also had to replace the battery when UrS6y decided to be as frigid as the temperatures during the few days it was colder in Milwaukee than Alaska. This was not the most pleasant job to do on the side of the road, but the engine did eventually start with the help of a jumper pack, and now I know for sure that the on-board temperature gauge does read down to -40 degrees Fahrenheit still after a quarter-century.
But when I did finally sit down in the most comfortable seat in a car I have ever had the pleasure of sitting in and closed all of the doors, I just sat there and enjoyed my victory.
My victory was not just a triumph over the elements causing my electrical deficit, but the fact that I get to use this car every day and be a part of its story. I get to influence the character of this car the same as it influences mine.
Neither of these cars can be summarized by their specifications or performance figures. They are much more than that. They represent even more than just what each car individually offers to each owner.
These cars are not just representations of technological advancements in automotive design, or representations of Audi’s legendary racing pedigree, or even just modes of transportation.
They are characters. They both have stories of laughter and sadness just as people do. But just like people, these cars lack the foibles and flaws that give them their character without human interaction.
Like humans, these cars were not meant to sit alone, untouched and unloved. Cars, especially ones like these, were never made to sit still and simply be admired. They must be used.
Why would a human have legs and feet if we were not meant to run?
Why would cars have wheels which are round and a motor to make them spin if they were not meant to be driven?
Adam,
Great meeting you today. Great read. I forwarded this onto my buddies back in MN for them to check out. I look forward to reading your future UrS6 article. Have a great one.
Respectfully,
Nick