Buying an A2 at auction - madness or stroke of genius

I bought mine on ebay, sight unseen in 2011. A great car.


In fact most of my cars have come from auctions ... ever since a bad experience with a franchised dealer back in the late 90s. The way I look at it, is if you get zero benefit from paying over the odds for a main dealer car, what's the point?

I suppose time and effort are the two things that would go against an auction in my mind - instant gratification when buying but the prospect of wasting time trying to put it right within a short while of buying doesn't appeal to me, should something go wrong. However, here I am trying to get other people to convince me it's the only show in town!

As I am in Ireland and A2s are as rare as hen's teeth, because they're about as sought after as hen's teeth, buying in the UK is probably the most convenient way to buy. There are one or two Irish companies that specialise in buying cars in the UK and transporting them back, it mightn't be such a bad way to go but I wouldn't consider unless the price was right.

I was considering purchasing sojah's A2 on ebay but given the unknown cost of an engine rebuild, I didn't really give it too much thought.

There are some guys

jvmcgovern said:

Or indeed somewhere in between - a stroke of madness!

I'm wondering what is the verdict on scouring the auctions for an A2? Occasionally there are good ones (at least based on appearances). I'm referring to british car auctions and manheim remarketing in particular.

Also, I wonder what sort of prices they might go for in the end?

For example, I remember seeing one baby blue (or grey maybe?) A2 1.4 TDI 90 Sport ages ago with RNS-E retrofitted and the interior was in mint condition except for a missing glovebox handle, with around 130k miles. It seemed to not sell for a long time and then disappeared from sight. I presume an enthusiast snapped it up.

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Oh dear. This car sounds very similar to the one I bought online yesterday. You've worried me here. I wonder why it was removed from sale only to be re-offered. Cheers you've spoiled my weekend now

Just as a swerve ball, sometimes you can be a lucky blighter and manage to buy a decent A2 off someone who doesn't really know their game that well, for example someone who thinks that all the gadgets and gizmo's come as standard , as I have become very quickly aware, there are so many variants out there.
I managed to find a pearler of a car, after months of watching, with all the toys I wanted on it, and the nightmare OSS not fitted, imagine my face when he allowed me to haggle him right down to a price that the bog standards go for. He thought that my 'toys' were standard issue because of the audi badge. Happy Bunny!!!
So, in short, auctions/e-bay can be a source of bargains too, it all depends who is selling it.