The Audi 5000

Here is a look at the Audi 5000. The car that got killed by 60 Minutes investigative jornalism.

The 5000 died a quick, undeserved death in the American marketplace, stabbed in the sales chart by investigative journalism. Its influence, however, is still with us twenty-three years later. Within just a couple model seasons, most Japanese manufacturers had appropriated the 5000’s “no nonsense” persona for their own, more modest vehicles. Mazda styled its late-80s 323, 626, and 929 sedans as knockoffs of Audi’s flagship saloon. The 1987 Toyota Camry and 1990 Honda Accord also carried surprising amounts of Teutonic styling DNA. It took American manufacturers a little longer, but eventually even they stripped their cars of chrome, complicated sheetmetal bends, and any other ornamentation.