Cool ride

[Fisher, Scott]

So in between grumbling about the stupid sub-35 degree behavior of our '93
100CSQ's automatic climate control system, I had much to be thankful for.
On Thanksgiving Day itself, I found The Roads up near where our new house is
located.

You must have some roads like these near home.  If you live in the Silicon
Valley, you probably know Highway 9, with its feeder roads like Empire
Grade, Ice Cream Grade, Bonny Doon Road, and the rest.  Apart from our
friends here, they're the main thing I've regretted about my plan to flee
Silicon Valley.  Stage Road between Pescadero and San Gregorio is where I
figured out how to make the Quattro oversteer under power, after all.  

And most of the roads in and around our new home -- Tualatin, Oregon (some
15 miles south of Portland, on the west side of I-5) -- were either
residential roads where the cats and/or kids we ran over might one day be
our own, or arrow-straight farm roads where the only challenge would be
hoping I could get the car braked down to speed if a neighbor stuck the nose
of a Subaru or a Suburban into the roadway.  Not a lot of fun for someone
whose motto has always been "They may pass us on the straights, but we'll
catch 'em in the corners."

So my friend Miq Millman stopped by a little before noon on Turkey Day.  Miq
and I used to be neighbors in Sunnyvale before *he* moved up to Oregon 8-9
years ago; turns out the house we're buying is even closer to Miq's than our
old houses used to be (and Miq wasn't even the car-guy friends we were
staying with).  Nice.  Especially because of all the interesting cars Miq
has (a very quick vintage Bugeye Sprite, a Miata that used to be
supercharged till he had the engine massaged to put out more power without
the supercharger than the stock one had with it, and an immaculate 911S
from, I think, 1967, plus various tow cars and trucks), he brought the one
car that was exactly right for a drive on a drizzly, cold Oregon day: his
black-on-black (with those electric violet suede inserts) 2000 S4.

Wow.

Let me say that again:

Wow.

Whatever you've read about the S4 is true.  It's quiet, smooth, comfortable,
and a complete rocket, even in bad weather.  It's everything you know and
love about quattro, with "adequate" power (something none of the Audis I've
ever owned has had).

Miq works for Sun Microsystems as an on-site support engineer, and therefore
has to face bad commute traffic on a regular basis, which is why he says he
ordered the Tiptronic.  It's been chipped, however, and in addition to
chipping the engine he claims the new software shifts the Tip much quicker
than stock -- 0.1 sec per shift, or so he says; I didn't have a watch on it.

What I *did* notice was the incredible rapidity with which the wet trees
ahead of us became wet trees behind us.  This is definitely NOT the
leisurely 100 bhp of my '83 CGT, nor the 174 bhp of our '93 100CSQ.  The car
leaps forward, with quattro's usual complete lack of wheelspin, even on wet
roads.  Magnificent.  Once or twice we had the opportunity to give it some
power coming out of a corner and the car was simply incredible each time.

Oh, the roads -- I think it's Grahams Ferry Road out toward Wilsonville, for
locals.  Not quite as rugged as some of the mountain roads around here, but
full of enough loops, whorls, dips and snaking right-left combinations that
I can't wait to drive it myself.

Even if I don't have anything that'll be quite as dramatic as that S4 was,
in the rain, with slick black asphalt dotted with orange Oregon maple
leaves.  Man, what a car.  And only about the same price as the down payment
we're making on the Oregon house... sure, if it was me, I'd buy the S4 and
rent, but my wife has this thing about owning a home.  Silly her.  Maybe
I'll just supercharge the CGT to keep me in grins.

--Scott Fisher
  somewhere between Sunnyvale, CA and Tualatin, OR