by Doug DeMuro
Speaking of value: by far the best part about the 996 Turbo is pricing. You see, most Porsche purists believe that other 996 models are crap, so they’ve gotten pretty cheap. Really cheap. Insanely cheap. I mean, go on RennList right now, and you’ll see guys offering to trade them for Chipotle gift cards.
But here’s the thing: the Turbo isn’t worthless. It looks nicer. It drives better. It doesn’t have the IMS problem. Performance is magnificent. And yet, in spite of all its magical benefits, its pricing is pulled down by the rest of the lineup! So for something like $37,000, you can have a reliable, enjoyable, exciting, high-performance sports car with exotic-rivaling performance and a Porsche badge up front.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why the 996 Turbo is the greatest Porsche you can buy today. In fact, I love it so much that I wouldn’t mind buying my old car back. Unfortunately, I’ve lost all the guy’s details, and the call center people never seem to know what I’m talking about. “996 Turbo?” they say. “Have you tried turning it off and back on again?”
Here’s How I Once Bought a Rare Mercedes for Half Its Value
Originally published on Jalopnik—December 18, 2014
Gather ‘round, kiddies, because it’s time for a feature I’ve decided to call Story Time with Uncle Doug. Here’s how it works: first, I spend hours writing an excellent, brilliantly researched story of great personal interest, possibly related to Land Rover. Then, you read the first few paragraphs and think: “Hmm … I wonder if Tavarish has posted anything today.”
But today’s episode is far from boring, because it’s about the time I scammed a Fiat dealer out of eight grand. This one has it all: deceit. Betrayal. A classic Mercedes-Benz. A clueless car dealer. A startling discovery. And one of the single worst automotive trades of all time; worse than the day Volkswagen approached Chrysler and said “We hear you’re making an outdated, unpopular minivan. We want to get in on that.”
It all started on a warm summer morning in Atlanta. Or perhaps it was a cold winter day. Uncle Doug sometimes forgets these things, because his brain is filled with boundless levels of questionable Land Rover knowledge. (For example: the transmission in a Land Rover Freelander lasts 14 percent longer than grocery store bananas.) For all I remember, this whole story might revolve around an elderly woman selling a classic BMW, and she only gave me a good deal because I threatened her with gun violence.
Ha ha! Uncle Doug is just kidding, of course. In fact, this story begins in September 2011, when I was playing around on Autotrader at work. This was my usual activity when I was at work. Some guys were good with Excel. Some guys were good with PowerPoint. Some guys gave good speeches; other guys were good motivators. Me, I spent most of the workday on Autotrader, thus proving the old office adage: you probably won’t get fired unless you kill someone, or steal something, or say the n-word.
So I’m sitting there, browsing along one day, and I see it: a 1993 Mercedes-Benz 500E with just 72,000 miles, newly listed at a dealership called Fiat of South Atlanta.
For those of you who don’t know anything about the 500E, allow me to explain: this was a Mercedes-Benz built by Porsche. What happened was, in the early 1990s, Porsche had hit desperate times, largely because their only three products—the 911, the 944, and the 928—were older than most forms of limestone. So things were rough, and Porsche was on the verge of bankruptcy, and the executives started calling local businesses in Stuttgart and asking if they could come in on the weekends and sweep the floors for a little extra cash.
So anyway, Mercedes-Benz felt bad for Porsche, and also they wanted a high-performance sedan to compete with the BMW M5. The only problem was, Mercedes’ largest V8, from its SL-Class convertible, didn’t fit in the engine bay of their E-Class sedan. So they sent the SL-Class engine and the E-Class body over to Porsche and told them to “figure it out.” Well, Porsche did figure it out: they widened the fenders, they changed the suspension, and eventually Porsche built several thousand 500E units at its Stuttgart factory, just feet from where they made the 911.
Of course, all this means the 500E is now very rare and desirable, so I was surprised when it popped up at Fiat of South Atlanta. Usually they’re with private sellers, or collector car dealerships, where they’re presented with fifty-seven high-color photographs and a price tag roughly equivalent to the entire annual budget of the United States Department of Agriculture, or best offer.
So I called up the Fiat dealer to verify its existence, and I spoke to a saleswoman whose name I’ve forgotten. I’ll go with Tammy.
“Is this a 500E?” I asked.
“Yes!” Tammy replied. “A 500E.”
“A five hundred E?” I said.
“Uh, yes, sir,” she insisted. “A five-hundred E.”
“So when you look on the back, and you see the numbers,” I said. “They say five, zero, zero, E.”
“Are you a complete idiot?” Tammy asked.
I leveled with her.
“Tammy,” I said. “Are you aware that the air suspension in a Land Rover Discovery lasts 9 percent longer than milk left out on the counter?”
With the car’s 500E status confirmed, I was ecstatic. In fact, I could barely contain myself all day at work. A 500E! With low miles! A true German super sedan! A Porsche-built Mercedes! Right here in my backyard! I couldn’t wait to check it out. So at the end of the work day, I picked up two of my friends, Andrew and Ally, and I drove down to Fiat of South Atlanta—home of giant neon window writing, day-old donuts, and ninety-nine-dollar lease deals—to look at the rarest German super sedan manufactured in the last thirty years.
As I recall, there were two especially unusual elements of the test drive. Number one, they let us go out alone, which is always fun because you don’t have to awkwardly praise the car to avoid offending the salesperson. (“Boy, this Hyundai Tiburon sure has nice … windows.”) And number two: at some point, after about ten minutes of driving around, I looked down and discovered the car was either completely out of fuel, or the gas gauge was broken. I decided there was only one way to find out for sure—and that’s when, for the first time in the entire history of automotive test drives, I pulled up to a gas station and pumped my own gas, with my own money, on my own test drive, into a car I didn’t own.
And guess what? The fuel gauge shot right up.
When we eventually returned to the dealer, it quickly became clear they had no idea what this car was. Where these things were usually selling for $14,000 in rough shape or $30,000 with low miles and all records, the Fiat dealer wanted $10,500—for a fully original, 72,000-mile 500E that drove like it had been perfectly maintained by a fastidious West German mechanic named Dieter who would occasionally write letters to the town council when he discovered a street sign was getting worn out. It was that level of perfect.
Admittedly, it didn’t have any records—but that didn’t deter me. I offered the dealer “eleven grand, out the door,” which I later realized was a $400 discount. Years later, I negotiated more than $4,000 off my CTS-V wagon from another Atlanta-area dealer—and here I was, asking for a discount that couldn’t even buy me a stolen MacBook on Craigslist. Tammy didn’t even go in to check with her sales manager. She shook my hand on the spot and told me that we had a deal.
When I went in to sign the paperwork, it became clear that the only thing crazier than the dealer was the previous owner. I mean, yeah, sure, the dealer had its own issues with sanity: the sales manager told me that since they had listed the car the previous afternoon, they had received calls “from all over the country” asking about it. And yet this didn’t prompt them to do any checking into the car’s history, or its value, or its rarity. They just stuck it on the lot and waited for the first guy to show up with a checkbook and a couple gallons of gas.
But the previous owner really must’ve been nuts.
“How did you even get this car?” I asked, curious how a 500E winds up at a dealer that primarily sells budget-priced hatchbacks that move with the same sense of ur
gency as an elderly grocery store customer paying by check.
“A guy traded it in yesterday,” said the sales manager. “Yeah, he sold us this car and a boat, and he bought a Mini Countryman.”
My jaw dropped. Folks: a guy brought in a seaworthy, oceangoing, pleasure-inducing boat and a rare, desirable, low-mileage, high-performance Mercedes 500E … and he drove off the lot with a MINI COUNTRYMAN. I mean no disrespect to the Countryman here, but this is an awful trade. In fact, in the world history of awful trades, I believe this one ranks fourth, following right behind the time the Boston Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees for a series of little-known, mediocre players; the time the Native Americans traded Babe Ruth to the Dutch for Manhattan; and the time the Colonists traded Babe Ruth to Napoleon for the Louisiana Territory.
But the deal was done, and the paperwork was filled out, and the car was sold, and I was headed home, where I figured this entire ordeal would now come to an end. Little did I know, two more interesting occurrences were still left to take place.
Number one: after I got home, I started checking out the car, and I noticed something in the back seat. There, stuck inside a manila folder wedged below the seat, were dozens of service records. Fluid changes. Brake jobs. Belt replacements. The previous owner had even saved oil box tops from his do-it-yourself oil changes—and he had carefully written the date and mileage of each oil change, going back for years, to an age before it was socially acceptable to wear a beard like an unkempt bird’s nest.
Number two: eventually, I posted news of my purchase on the 500E forums, which primarily consist of about nineteen guys who sit around and discuss how their car values are going up. Almost immediately, someone came on and replied that I was a thief: he had made a deal with the Fiat dealer earlier that afternoon over the phone for just eighty five hundred bucks, and he planned to come collect the car a few days later. And I swooped in and GRABBED IT! Quickly, the 500E forum turned on me in the way that only a forum full of sixty-five-year-old men can: with rampant misuse of the “QUOTE” function. I stopped posting almost immediately.
In the end, I decided to flip the car—and I sold it within a couple months to a guy in Ohio for $16,000, or about six grand more than I had paid. It was a sad event, and I was disappointed to see the super sedan go—but as it was getting loaded on to the trailer for its trip north, one nagging thought kept me from getting depressed. At least I wasn’t trading it for a Mini Countryman.
Here’s Why the Audi S4 V8 Is an Awful Used Car
Originally published on Jalopnik—December 30, 2014
It happened about five months ago. I’m sitting around the house in my underwear, wondering how the hell Drew Carey puts up with all those aging Midwesterners who scream like an airplane-riding infant the second they win a bottle of Listerine. And I get a message from Jalopnik editorial fellow Chris Perkins.
It’s a picture of an Audi S4 parked on a Manhattan street. But this isn’t just any Audi S4: it’s an S4 Avant, the station wagon model. In Audi’s beautiful Nogaro Blue color. With a stick shift. And a “For Sale” sign on it.
For those of you who don’t follow the world of high-performance Audis, a Nogaro Blue S4 Avant with a stick shift is rare. A unicorn, if you will. But finding one sitting randomly on the street with a “For Sale” sign is even more rare and unbelievable. It’s the automotive equivalent of a unicorn and Bigfoot and a space alien all sitting in one room, playing poker, and then the Loch Ness Monster walks in and gets a royal flush.
“I thought you might be interested,” Chris tells me.
Chris was right. Few things would interest me more. To me, a Nogaro Blue S4 Avant with a stick shift is up there with having the power to become invisible. And if I were invisible, one of the first things I would do is figure out who owns a Nogaro Blue S4 Avant, so I could steal it.
So anyway, I called the number on the “For Sale” sign, and I spoke to the seller. It turned out the car had some small scuffs and scrapes, and a minor accident on the Carfax. Mileage was a little high, at 122,000. But the seller only wanted thirteen grand! For a 340-horsepower, all-wheel drive station wagon! In Audi’s famous Nogaro Blue! WITH A STICK SHIFT!!! I called Chris and asked him to set up a test drive. As long as it moves under its own power, I told Chris, I want this car.
And then, that night, I went on the Audi forums and did a little research.
As it turns out, there’s a reason these things have gotten so cheap. And given that this is a Volkswagen Group product, the reason is exactly what you’d expect: the engine has the propensity to blow up at any random moment, requiring a repair that costs approximately the same as one of those public art sculptures that always looks like a huge piece of discarded construction equipment, but actually symbolizes something like the struggle of the Asiatic Snapping Turtle against the tyrannical oppression of airplane noise.
Here’s the background: the previous Audi S4, which came out in 1999, used a timing belt rather than a timing chain. This annoyed the hell out of everyone, because the belt had to be changed every few years, and the only way you can do this job, or any job in a 1990s Audi, is you have to remove the front end, and the engine, and all the glass, and then you have to do a little jig on the service drive that involves a socket wrench and some lederhosen. For this, you may bill thirty-one hours.
So what Audi did on the V8-powered S4 model, which came out in 2004, was obvious: they ditched the stupid belt for a chain, like most other automakers were doing at the time. And since the chain was now designed to last the life of the car, Audi decided to stick it waaaay in the back of the engine, up against the firewall. Apparently the theory was that the chain would be so robust, and strong, and dependable, that it would never have to be touched. You can probably guess what happened next.
Yes, that’s right: it had to be touched.
You see, as it turns out, the chain itself didn’t have any problems with dependability. But Audi, being Audi, decided to use substandard materials for the chain tensioners, and the cam adjusters, which are two related—and highly important—components that keep the chain turning around and around and around every time you drive the car. The result is that these parts eventually fail, requiring the replacement of virtually everything you see in this amazing image of an Audi S4 engine worryingly sitting outside an Audi S4:
Apparently, what happens is this: you’re cruising along one day in your 2004-2007 S4, listening to electronic dance music, thinking about how cool it would be to stance a Rolls-Royce Phantom. And all of a sudden, you hear a little rattle coming from the engine. This is the sound of your timing belt wobbling around like a toddler in a McDonald’s ball pit.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: This doesn’t seem so bad! Hoist the engine out of the car, replace a few tensioners, and a few adjusters, and maybe a timing chain or two. And then you’re good for another eight years!
Well, here’s the thing: there’s no such thing as “not so bad” in the world of used Audi repairs. According to an excellent summary of the problem over on the Audi forums, an Audi dealer charges around eight grand to fix this issue. You want to do it yourself? No problem. The parts alone are three grand, and then you have to consider the hours you’ll spend under the car, covered in grease, wondering why the hell Audi designed this vehicle so that it could only be fixed by a creature the size of a cicada. All for a car that’s only worth about fifteen grand, according to average pricing on Autotrader.
Now, since this column will undoubtedly hit the Audi forums—a group of folks who haven’t exactly been my biggest fans, ever since I once said the Allroad is less reliable than “a vehicle made entirely by chimpanzees using random car parts”—I should issue a disclaimer. This issue might not affect all V8 S4s. Some people have made it to 150,000 miles without issue. Some people have suffered the failure at 75,000 miles. But in the world of $8,000 automotive repairs, “might not” is hardly a comfort—especially since the problem could present itself at any time, without warning. Just a little
rattle, coming from the engine. And that’s when you know you’re not buying name-brand toothpaste for the rest of the year.
So I never did buy the S4 Avant that Chris found for me—and the last I heard, it’s available. Driving around Manhattan. “For Sale” sign in the window. With a nervous driver behind the wheel, fingers crossed that he doesn’t hear the rattle.
Acura Botched Every Single Aspect of the NSX Launch
Originally published on Jalopnik—January 14, 2015
I still remember when I first heard that Acura would be coming out with a replacement for the famed NSX sports car. It was 1987; I was still in the womb, and the original NSX hadn’t even come out yet.
Yes, folks, it’s true: that’s how long Acura has been talking about the all-new, second-generation NSX, which finally made its debut in production form earlier this week at the Detroit Auto Show, with approximately the same level of fanfare as Bounty rolling out a new line of highly absorbent paper towels.