Junkyard Gem: 1970 Audi 100LS

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When Us citizens could invest in new cars built by Audi ancestors DKW and NSU throughout the fifties and nineteen sixties (few did so), the Audi tale as we know it in this article really began in 1969, when the 1970 100LS went on sale in the United States. The 100LS remained on sale by way of 1976 and attained a compact-but-devoted American next, and I attempt my very best to uncover discarded examples throughout my junkyard travels. This has been a challenging endeavor, with just a lone ’76 sedan showing up prior to my camera throughout the earlier 10 years or so. Past 7 days, although, I identified this incredibly unusual initial-model-year 100LS in a lawn northeast of Denver.

Observe that the business title was “Audi NSU Auto Union” at the time of this car’s manufacture that is what Volkswagen’s bosses named it immediately after the 1969 acquisition of NSU, and the title caught right until the business grew to become just Audi AG in the 1980s. Date of manufacture was April of 1970, all-around the time when the Baader-Meinhoff Team was stirring up difficulty in West Germany.

Bob Hagestad ran a Porsche/Audi dealership on Colfax Avenue in Denver, grew to become perfectly-recognised as a Colorado 924 racer, and went on to promote Volkswagens in Texas.

This car seems to have been perfectly-cared-for throughout its initial few of decades, at which position it ended up expending numerous years sitting down outdoors in the harsh Substantial Plains climate. A great deal of the paint has been burned off its upper surfaces and there is rust-by way of from numerous years of winter season snow buildup.

The as soon as-magnificent inside has been irradiated into a dust-billowing crispiness.

As so frequently happens with cars saved outdoors for prolonged periods in this article, rodents built their nests in the passenger and engine compartments. You need to have to be cautious with mouse-poop-stuffed cars like this in Colorado boneyards, because hantavirus is a truly lethal danger in this article. I have seen even worse rodent-poop cars than this, although — considerably even worse.

The 1.eight-liter engine all the way at the front of the engine compartment built one hundred fifteen horsepower when new, which was very superior ability for 1970.

The four-on-the-flooring guide was continue to state-of-the-art in 1970, with most Detroit three-pedal cars continue to operating three-on-the-trees. The final new four-velocity guide car out there in the United States strike the showrooms when this Audi was a quarter-century outdated, so this sort of transmission remained appropriate for fairly a whilst. The 100LS bought an optional automatic transmission commencing in 1971, and it value $two hundred additional (about $1,310 in 2021 dollars).

The shift diagram crafted into a standard VDO gauge housing is a good contact.

These VDO/Kienzle clocks went into hundreds of thousands of European cars around the decades.

This Emden AM/FM radio was an $85 option. That is about $555 in current-working day bucks, but completely required if you needed to listen to the hits of 1970 with the essential fidelity.

So how considerably was the complete car? MSRP on the two-door 100LS sedan arrived to $3,695, or about $25,450 in 2021 dollars. Meanwhile, the even larger and flashier 1970 Buick Gran Sport hardtop coupe value just $3,283, and that incorporated a 455-cubic-inch (seven.five-liter) V8 rated at 350 horsepower. An American car shopper had to be anything of a devoted Europhile to choose a new Audi in 1970 (in that situation, although, the $2,982 BMW 2002 would have been tricky to resist).