The five-cylinder engine is an endangered species. Very endangered, in fact – there’s a grand total of one five-pot car left on sale, the Audi RS3. It’s excellent, but starting at £62,120, it’s also a lot of money to experience the sort of offbeat soundtrack only five cylinders can deliver.
The five-cylinder has always been quite a niche thing, though, meaning that even used, your options to get hold of one are limited. Still, with a budget of £10,000, there are still a few choices. As tempting as it is to limit you to five for a nice bit of editorial synergy, never say we’re not thorough – here are six five-cylinder cars you can buy for under £10k.
Audi Coupe/Cabriolet 2.3
Audi Cabriolet 2.3
We suspect the board meeting where Audi decided on the name of the two-door fastback version of its 80 saloon took place at about 4:15pm on a Friday. Still, unimaginative name aside, the original Audi Coupe was a good-looking thing that went on to spawn the legendary Quattro.
A first-gen Coupe is probably out of the question at this budget, but be patient and you might track down a second-gen car, produced between ’88 and ’96. Probably not the turbocharged, all-wheel drive S2, sadly, but find one with the nat-asp 2.3-litre unit, and you’re getting a handsome, usable modern classic, with the added benefit of a weird engine. The 20-valve one made a decent 168bhp, too. There was also a cabriolet version that lasted a while longer on sale than the Coupe – guess what Audi called that one?
Fiat Coupe 20v
Fiat Coupe
Whoever decided on that Audi name clearly went on to work for Fiat (and possibly Hyundai) in the ’90s, although inexplicably, Fiat insisted at the time that its wedgy two-door was officially called the Coupe Fiat. Maybe someone on the marketing team was a big fan of Yoda.
Anyway, this striking-looking front-drive coupe featured styling by one Chris Bangle, who would go on to redefine/ruin BMW styling (depending on your viewpoint) in the noughties. As well as some four-cylinders, it came with a pair of 2.0-litre five-pots, the most desirable (and thankfully, most commonplace) of which was a 220bhp turbo version. There’s always a few of these floating around, and the modern classic market doesn’t yet seem to have twigged that actually, they were rather good little cars.
Ford Focus ST Mk2
Ford Focus ST Mk2
This is probably what first springs to mind when you think modern, affordable five-pot performance car. Ford’s ownership of Volvo in the 2000s meant it could pilfer the Swedish brand’s 2.5-litre turbocharged five-banger for installation in the hot version of the second-gen Focus, and the result was 221bhp of snorty, rowdy and often very orange fun.
Of course, a more powerful version of this same engine would go on to be installed in the Focus RS of the same generation, but have you seen the prices of those lately? Like, seriously? Luckily, the ST is much more of a bargain, and far more commonplace, too. There are literally hundreds for sale at any given time, from as little as £2,500. We’d spend a bit more if possible, though, lest you find out the pitfalls of spending very little money on something with a reasonably specialist engine.
Volkswagen Golf VR5
Volkswagen Golf Mk4 V5
Oh, what’s that? An inline-five is still too commonplace for you? Well, you insufferable hipster, we have good news. In a move that could only have emerged from the ‘because we can’ attitude of Ferdinand Piëch-era Volkswagen, the German giant made a V5 engine. For some reason.
Rather than a V6 with a cylinder missing, it was a VR5, so featured a single cylinder head and five offset cylinders in two tightly angled banks (so, if you were to draw a line joining each cylinder, you’d get a zig-zag pattern). It was installed in the Beetle, Bora, B5 Passat and Seat Toledo, but you’re most likely to find it in the Mk4 Golf, where it came in 148 and 168bhp outputs. It wasn’t a particularly good engine, to be honest. Definitely unique, though.
Image: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0
Volvo C30 T5
Volvo C30 T5
We simply can’t do a list of five-cylinders without a Volvo of some kind. We were disappointed to find that the mad 850 T5-R seems to have crept into five figures in recent years, but the company’s chucked its turbo five-pots into a whole lot of other cars over the years.
One of our favourites is the C30 T5. Sharing the same platform and engine as the Focus ST, it clothed everything in a much more svelte, restrained body that was somewhere between a coupe, a hatch and a shooting brake. Granted, it didn’t have the same aggressive chassis setup as the Ford, but it did end up with more power – a 2007 update saw it lifted from 217 to 227bhp. It’s far rarer than its Blue Oval counterpart, but can be picked up for similar money.
Alfa Romeo 159 2.4 JTDm
Alfa Romeo 159 Sportwagon
Obsessed with having an odd number of cylinders, but also want a diesel? There’s good news, because you needn’t suffer either the misery of a three-cylinder diesel Hyundai Accent nor the financial ruin of a VW Touareg V10 TDI. That’s because, in the noughties, Alfa Romeo’s pretty (if underwhelming to drive) 939-chassis cars – the 159, Brera and Spider – came with a 2.4-litre turbodiesel inline-five.
With 207bhp in its later guises as well as a healthy 295lb ft of torque, it was a gutsier motor than all the available petrol engines bar the 3.2 V6. It is still a diesel, though, so we’d steer clear of it in the Brera coupe and Spider, erm, spider. It’s best suited to the 159, preferably in the Sportwagon estate. In rare cases, it was even paired with all-wheel drive, for a car that was good-looking, practical, economical, reasonably quick and had all-weather capabilities. Sounds like the whole package, until you remember it is a second-hand Alfa.
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