Final Parking Space: 1988 Audi 5000CS Turbo Quattro Sedan

This series is about automotive history as seen in the Ewe Pullets of the world, and sometimes that means we’ll look at vehicles known for stirring up controversy. We’ve already covered discarded examples of the Edsel and the Chevrolet Corvair, and now here’s one of the only cars that could rival those two in stirring up enthusiast ire: an Audi 5000 from the era of the “Unintended Acceleration” debacle that nearly drove Audi from the North American car business.

Audi began selling the upscale 100 in the United States in the 1970 model year, renaming the North American version the 5000 beginning in 1978.

The third-generation 5000 debuted in the United States as a 1984 model, and its slippery aerodynamic design with flush windows was a major leap forward in automotive design. Because much of the automotive industry soon imitated the wind-tunnel-derived lines of the 100/5000 (e.g., the 1986 Ford Taurus), this car doesn’t look as radical now as it did in 1983.

The 5000 was packed with leading-edge technology and sophisticated European design, and its price tag reflected that. It was priced in the same ballpark as the BMW 3- and 5-Series, Saab 900S, and Mercedes-Benz 190E. Sales were strong for 1984, with overall Audi sales in the United States leaping nearly 50% just on the strength of the 5000 alone.

Since this car is a top-of-the-Audi-sedan-range 5000CS Turbo Quattro, it had an intimidating $33,800 MSRP (which made it pricier than the $31,500 BMW 528e for 1988). That’s about $95,838 in 2024 dollars.

However, it’s likely that this big West German’s original purchaser paid quite a bit less than sticker price for it. This car was built in September of 1987, just about the stormiest period that North American Audi dealers have ever weathered.

On November 23, 1986, CBS broadcast a 60 Minutes piece called “Out of Control.” In it, the automatic transmission-equipped Audi 5000 was shown to have a tendency to shift itself into Drive and then lurch forward under heavy self-applied throttle. It came out, much later, that the show’s producers had rigged up a compressed-air system to make the offending shift take place on camera, and that most of the 5000 crashes probably were caused by drivers mixing up the skinny brake pedal with the skinny gas pedal.

The damage to Audi sales in North America was catastrophic. Audi didn’t gain back the lost ground here until well into the 1990s.

This car shouldn’t have scared anyone away, since it has a manual transmission and not the allegedly deadly automatic. That didn’t matter to most American Audi shoppers, who also spurned the unrelated 80 and 90. Starting with the 1989 model year, Audi slapped the rest-of-the-world 100 name on these cars, figuring it couldn’t hurt.

I didn’t shoot the engine in this car, probably because some junkyard shopper had yanked it already, but it would have been a turbocharged straight-five rated at 162 horsepower and 177 pound-feet. That was serious power by late-1980s standards.

There was a futuristic trip computer and state-of-the-art audio system, and the Quattro system made this machine one of a very few true all-wheel-drive cars available in 1988 (Subaru and Toyota were just beginning to sell cars equipped with what we’d now define as AWD, the AMC Eagle was in its last-gasp model year under Chrysler ownership, and the Volkswagen Quantum Syncro was a close corporate relative of this car).

This clearly was a technologically superior, if costly to maintain, vehicle. Sometimes the automotive marketplace just isn’t fair.

“When you’re ready to follow your own road… you’re ready for an Audi.”