Junkyard Find: 1989 Audi 200 Quattro Turbo

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

The 1984 Audi 5000 Junkyard Find reminded us about the nightmare faced by Audi after 60 Minutes framed the 5000 as a an unintended accelerator in 1986. Audi sales took a real beating in the late 1980s, but some 5000s (renamed the 200 in an attempt to banish the stigma of a car whose greatest sin was the proximity of the brake pedal to the gas pedal) were bought in 1989. Here’s an optioned-up example that I found in the same Denver junkyard as the ’84.

You didn’t have a lot of options for all-wheel-drive sedans in the late 1980s; the AMC Eagle’s last year was 1987, Subarus were still primitive and cramped, the BMW 325iX made no sense, and Camry shoppers fell asleep before the salesman could even show them the All-Trac version. The 200 Quattro, on the other hand, just glowed with technological complexity sophistication, and it was big and comfortable.

I might need to go back and get this cool DIFF controller switch.

162 horsepower from a turbocharged five-banger mounted way forward in the engine compartment.

The best part is that you could get this car with a 5-speed.

Just 120,146 miles on this one. The interior is very nice, too; it looks like a single fender-bender that banged up a few body panels doomed this car to the automotive equivalent of the glue factory.










Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Obbop Obbop on Oct 06, 2012

    I will take a slant-6 over a slant-5 any day and nights, too.

  • Audi200qtw Audi200qtw on Jan 18, 2016

    where is this car located what junyard im an audi enthuist hopefully will be buying a audi 200 soon i would take the whole as a parts car ik the parts are very expensive

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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