Price: £1995
Year: 1991
Mileage: 133,000
Condition: One-owner car
Seller: Car & Classic
Do you remember when it was still possible to get hold of a one-lady-owner Audi 80?
Back in the late 1990s, cars like this 1.8S would have been relatively common, as Audi owners of the time were known for keeping their solid, robust cars for longer than the norm. Nine or ten years in the same hands wasn’t surprising. But this example’s made it to thirty years with just one name on the V5C vehicle keeper form. It still wears a dealer number plate, and the Audi sticker in the rear window that was put there when it was a shiny new car awaiting its pre-delivery inspection.
Its Cheshire owner hasn’t abused it; that’s clear from the accompanying pictures, which show off rust-free white bodywork (and white does have a tendency of showing cars at their worst), and the clean and tidy interior.
Under the skin most of its mechanicals are Passat in origin, so the chances are you can rely on this car to take you another 133,000 miles in addition to those it’s already done. It has an MOT until January 2022, and has just had a replacement cambelt.
Despite this, and its extensive catalogued history of maintenance, we weren’t initially sure whether to consider this Audi as an Unexceptional Classified. For one, it’s an Audi – an aspirational brand, when our cause is to champion the mundane.
But it’s a relatively lowly spec; you can imagine its sole owner having saved for years, perhaps trading in something more down-to-earth to proudly put an Audi badge on the drive. The fact it’s been owned for so long speaks of a cherished car with a story to tell. Which is ultimately what we love to see at the Festival of the Unexceptional, where the story is just as important as the car.
It almost deserves to retire into a collection. But as anyone who’s owned an Audi 80 will tell you, it’s barely run-in. Maybe the next thirty years will see it enjoyed as a daily-use classic.
