Junkyard Find: 1986 Audi Coupe GT
This series has featured a few 1980s Audis in recent months, including a couple of unintended accelerators and this crypto-Audi VW Quantum Syncro wagon. But what about the Coupe GT, which had an interesting-looking Giugiaro design (we’ll forget that Giugiaro did the Hyundai Excel) and offered American car shoppers a German alternative to sporty front-wheel-drive Japanese coupes such as the Honda Prelude and (1986 and later) Toyota Celica? You don’t see many of these things in 21st-century America, but Coloradans love Audis— even the non-Quattro ones— and I knew a Coupe GT would show up at a Denver yard sooner or later.
These things were available with the Quattro four-wheel-drive system, which would have made more sense for trips to the ski slopes or whatever Audi drivers do in the winter here, but the ground clearance wasn’t up to, say, International Harvester Scout levels when things got serious.
The interior of this car has been picked so clean that I suspect it was a parts car that got scrapped the moment its final owner got all the stuff he wanted out of it.
I’ll bet not many Coupe GTs were sold with air conditioning.
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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They should just shipped them directly to the junkyard, bypassing the poor hapless middleman/consumer in the process.
Probably one of my most favorite cars ever. Still have my grey on red 86 Commemorative Edition. Absolutely trouble free compared to newer Audis. Even my digital dash still works.