Are you really a petrolhead if you don’t love the rumble of an eight-cylinder engine? For many of us, a burbling V8 was the soundtrack to our wide-eyed youth as we discovered the magical noises that internal combustion engines can make.
But many cylinders mean many pounds, right? Not necessarily. Let’s quickly skip over the fuel bills that V8s attract and focus instead on the purchase price, which these days can be surprisingly low. In fact, it’s precisely because V8s can cost so much to run that they’ve plunged in price, which means there’s a plethora of eight-cylinder noise machines available to buy for less than £5000. We’ve picked our favorites.
Audi S4
The B6-generation Audi A4 sold for a very short time between 2003 and 2005, but it marked the transition for the performance S4 from a V6 engine to a V8. There aren’t too many of them around, but we’ve found a couple for around £4500 with around 100,000 miles on the clock, and that, my friends, is a bargain.
The V8 crammed under the bonnet is a 4.2-liter unit with 339bhp, and assuming it still has all its horses after two decades, that’ll get you to 62mph in just over five seconds. Once again, running costs will be heinous, and it’s not the best handling Audi has ever made, but enjoy the noise and the Quattro acceleration and count the pennies you haven’t spent. Yet.
BMW 6-series
When it was new, the E63-generation BMW 645i cost north of £50,000. Between 2003 and 2010, that money got you one of the finest luxury coupes on the road. While the Chris Bangle-style looks divided opinion, we think it’s aged exceedingly well.
Today, for as little as £3,000, you can get yourself an early 645i (or the convertible 645Ci) with its 4.4-litre and its 338bhp. That’s a heck of a lot of style, comfort, and engine capacity for very little cash. Sure, it’ll be 20 years old and probably have north of 100,000 miles on it, and you might end up spending a fortune fixing things, but hey, you can’t have everything.
Jaguar S-Type
Before Jaguar went all modern and svelte, the company was hanging on to its historic gentleman cruiser look. The S-Type is a great example. Sold between 1998 and 2007, there were several S-Types that came loaded with an old-fashioned V8 to match the vintage-inspired looks. And today, many of them can be bought for a song.
Less than £4000 will get you an S-Type with either a 4.0-liter or 4.2-liter V8, producing 281bhp and 300bhp, respectively. But we’ve found a couple of S-Type Rs for a shade under £5000, which will give you a tuned version of the 4.2 V8 with a whopping 400bhp and with less than 100,000 miles on the clock. That’ll give you one of the fastest barges in town.
Porsche Cayenne
Many scoffed when Porsche first brought out an SUV, but the Cayenne has sold by the bucketload and has helped finance the development of more pure-blood Porsches. So stop laughing and start looking at the classifieds – you can now find early Cayennes for less than £5000.
A scan of the classifieds shows several first-generation Cayenne S models, with a 4.5-litre V8 and 335bhp. Not only do you get a lot of physical cars for the money, with bags of space inside – but you also get a top-quality interior and, crucially, outstanding handling. Yeah, it’s big, but it feels like a Porsche. Promise. And yes, it’ll cost Porsche money to service and maintain. You have been warned.
Land Rover Range Rover
Luxury motoring doesn’t come more obvious than a Range Rover. The latest model is well north of £100,000, but an older one? How does around £3000 grab you? We found several very well-appointed L322-generation models from the mid-2000s, with relatively low miles – around 100,000 – for under £5,000.
For that money, you’ll get the waftiest of wafty drives, urged forward by a 4.4-litre petrol V8 with 282bhp. Or, if you’ll be pounding the motorways, what about a 272bhp 3.6-litre diesel V8 for slightly less insane fuel bills? It is always good to save money on repair costs…
