PGJ

It's getting near impossible to find a decent B5 avant nowadays (or B5 in general). I know, they were rare to begin with, but it's getting ridiculous. I've literally wanted one for 10 years. Now I can afford one, but I can't find any worthy of actually purchasing.

Someone can maybe explain to me - how did literally an entire generation of $45K MSRP cars get turned into some college kid's experiment that went horribly wrong?

I've been searching for a while, and this is about what I'm finding...overpriced or (badly) "modded" or abused or involved in a wreck. Or real nice at a reasonable price with a tiptronic.

This isn't exactly meant to be a want ad, more just to see what you guys are thinking.

jamesdmanley

id call it perfect timing. a generation (myself included) of civic (read 'cheap import car') 'tuners' grew up, graduated high school (college), got jobs, and now have some money. they want a nice car, something with some power, and loads of potential. the resale value of these cars is in the dirt, probably because of minor reliability issues, and these guys that are used to working on their beater civics arent afraid spin some wrenches. but what do i know, maybe im just speaking for myself

PGJ

OK, these cars are expensive as hell to own (properly) and tune (properly). A correctly performed stg. 3 (on a used S4, which requries a stage 0) is literally 10's of thousands. It's practically endless, you could drop well over 20K in addition to the the cost of the car to really do it correctly.

Maybe a lot of people who couldn't really afford an S4 bought one anyways and maintained/modded them the cheapo way, or didn't really know what they were getting into.

conall

I waited a year to find one with a manual transmission.
Bought it from someone that wanted to switch to a B7.
He had all maintenance records.
Guess I was lucky.

split71

You know what's funny is that ad you posted, that S4 was for sale back in April down in tampa near me. I was looking for a B5 S4 back in april and ended up buying one, and i saw that in my searching.

jhuffman

I'm with jamesdmanly. I think it all has to do with timing. I have always loved the v6 twin turbo engine configuration and there are 3 cars that I have always loved with that configuration. The mitsu 300gt VR4, the nissan 300zx twin turbo coupe, and the audi 2.7 (I prefer the styling of the a6 and thus have a mt6 a6 2.7). about 10 years ago the 3000gt and 300zx where hugely popular for the same reason the s4 is popular now. Try finding a nice first gen VR4. Its just not easy because they have mostly been destroyed by college 'import scene tuners'.

JLoft

Oh they are out there. Keep looking. My neighbor looked last summer and found an immaculate Cactus Green 6spd fairly quickly. (Older) adult driven with all the records. A beautiful car. And at a fair price - not a steal mind you - but fair. We had to go 1600 miles to get it.

And mine will be available sometime. 2002 Nogaro Blue, 6spd, 77K miles, blue alcantara interior, prem, cold weather, etc... Also (now older) adult driven and mechanically unmolested - no high-school "expert" mechanics allowed near it. A few fun additions like RS4 grill, Audi factory painted spoiler, real E-codes with City lights wired in correctly, full-screen RNS-E navigation. Like new - I even put in a new FIS LCD cluster last weekend. So wait around for a year and a half or so while I decide on a B8 color / interior combination....

-Jon

VMRWheels

Interesting concept, though I'd refer to it as less-than perfect timing, rather than the other way around.

For better or for worse, this theory seems to have some truth to it...

PGJ

hold the phone! is it an avant?

I made the decision...an avant is waht I really want so I'm not going to settle.

nchiarel

He vants and avant!

They're wicked hard to find, but good luck. I'd like one too...