While its mileage may be high, today’s Nice Price or No Dice S4 is claimed to have had a lot of its big-ticket issues handled. We’ll have to see how we handle its price.
The 2014 Nissan Juke we looked at yesterday proved a total enigma. Any aggressiveness implied by its Nismo (Nissan Motorsport International) badging seemed masked beneath the car’s flamboyant paint scheme and muted by its dull-as-dishwater CVT transmission. A tidy appearance and clear title were no match for these incongruous elements, resulting in the posted $8,995 price tag going down in a 73% No Dice loss.
Yesterday’s Juke had just shy of 200 horsepower and routed those ponies exclusively through the front wheels. Having one end of the car handle steering and power delivery while the other end plays Ross to its Rachel, bringing nothing to the game, isn’t an optimal situation. A better option would be to split those duties between axles for a more balanced approach. Should more horses be added to the herd, it’s even better to get both ends clocking in on the power delivery job, leaving no ponies in the corral and ensuring that every hoof is heard.
Audi, pardner
Beginning in the 1980s, German manufacturer Audi leveraged just such an AWD drivetrain to make its racers the dominant force in the World Rally Championship and later providing the brand with a key mechanism to differentiate its cars from competitors such as BMW and Mercedes.
Audi and its Quattro branding has become so synonymous with AWD to the point that today, any offering by the marque that doesn’t spin all its wheels in anger is considered the exception rather than the rule.
This 2005 Audi S4 Avant Quattro spins all four of its wheels. That’s important since, from the factory, it was given 339 horsepower and 302 lb-ft of torque to play with. That’s made possible by the 4.2-liter DOHC all-alloy V8 that lives and breathes under the hood. Behind that monster sits a Getrag AO3 six-speed manual, feeding a Torsen central diff, splitting power between the front and rear axles. According to the ad, that drivetrain has pushed this sport wagon for over 210,000 miles, an impressive number especially for so high-strung a car.
Killer Bs
Audi’s first S4 was built on the larger C4 platform of the 100 Series, released in 1991. Those were initially offered with a turbo five-pot, with the V8 arriving about halfway through the model run. The next S4 moved down a size, denoting the sporting variation of the B5 edition of the A4 (yes, Audi’s internal and external nomenclature is confusing). That arrived in 1997, followed by the B6 in 2003. It has continued on the mid-sized A4 platform for three more generations, and happily, it remains in Audi’s lineup to the present day.
This B6 Avant is claimed to be only one of 10 brought to the U.S. in 2005, and it is wearing a combination of black paint and an Alcantara interior. It sports a clean title and the aforementioned 210K on the ticker. Despite those miles and the 20 years of age, this remains both a good-looking car and a very tidy package. The bodywork appears clean and free of any war wounds, as do the Avus-style factory alloys.
Bass-akwards
It has also seen some major mechanical work, with the timing chains and clutch having been replaced or refreshed since the car was new. Both are engine-out procedures, as the chains are on the flywheel side of the engine to allow the motor to fit in the mid-sized car’s engine bay.
Other updates here include what the seller says is a switch to a later B7 console and the inclusion of a nav screen that will require both installation and dealer coding to work.
The rest of the interior is all stock, right down to the Recaro bucket seats masquerading as penguins. Audis of this era always had great, if austere cabins, and this Avant is no exception. In general terms, that just means it still looks hospitable today, unlike some BMWs of the same time period. This being a wagon, it also adds some utility to its sport, and thank you to Audi for the decades in which it has given us such fast estates.
Right priced?
The ad copy is brief, but it does note that the car features both an aftermarket tune and an exhaust that “sounds great.” Overall, it seems a well-kept example of a fairly rare and arguably desirable car. That being said, it is a highly-strung 20-year-old Audi, and those can, and often do, get into hijinks that can thin even the fattest of wallets. What might be the right entry point to allow a prospective buyer to overlook that possibility, as well as this car’s enormous mileage?
The seller seems to think that $6,000 is that number, and we’re here now to decide how accurate they might be in that assumption. What do you say? Is this S4 worth that kind of cash as it’s presented in its ad? Or does that price have thinking en garde rather than Avant-garde?
You decide!
Nice Price or No Dice:
Detroit, Michigan, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Don R. for the hookup!
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