20 years of the quattro, Ingolstadt

[Tom Nas]

Hi all,

Just downloading my mail and sipping a cold beer after returning home 15 
minutes ago, straight from Ingolstadt.

WOW! When Phil Payne said that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime trip, he 
wasn't kidding! Even Audi AG didn't expect the turnout to be this large- 
there were supposed to be around 120 UrQs and some 400 people. The count 
turned out to be 650 people and 270 UrQs!

A full report of the trip made by us- four guys from The Netherlands in an 
'85 UrQ and an '85 200 Avant quattro is forthcoming (we plan to put it 
online, together with a lot of the incredible amount of pictures we've taken).

Here's a couple of tidbits to make you guys drool:
About eight or nine Sport Quattros were attending, and two Treser Quattro 
Roadsters. The MTM S1 was there, and Audi took Michele Mouton's A2, Walter 
Rohrl's Pikes Peak S1 and another S1 out and ran them as part of the parade 
which congested a lot of the roads around Ingolstadt (Imagine a traffic jam 
of UrQs of all sorts, more than 2 km long!) We've visited the building 
where the UrQ was made (passing through a lot of top-secret factory areas 
to get there) and shook hands with Hannu Mikkola and Stig Blomqvist this 
morning. There was a nice display of the historic competition vehicles 
(including an STW A4, DTM V8, IMSA GTO 90 and TransAm 200) which you were 
not only allowed to touch but to sit in as well! As a consequence, I've 
taken the place of Michele Mouton in her old A2 (excellent driving 
position!) but had to abandon plans of sitting in Walter Rohrl's Pikes Peak 
monster (probably have to lay off the beers for a while in order to fit in 
there!) Audi proved to be an excellent host to the mass of fans attending, 
providing excellent and plentiful food, drink and goodies at regular intervals.
Ingolstadt is awash with Audis, my estimate is that one in four vehicles is 
not an Audi. Whereas there weren't that many UrQs 'at large', there were 
plenty of 200q20vs, V8s, Coupes and S-cars of all kinds. There were so many 
TTs running around Ingolstadt that you just stop noticing them after a day 
or so. I shot five rolls of 36-exposure films on everything that we saw, 
and hope to have them developed and printed soon. I've also taken a ton of 
digi-pics, so I'll put the best of those online as well.

Visits to the Neckarsulm (A2, A6, A8, RS4) and Ingolstadt (A3, A4, TT) 
production lines were also part of the trip, which provided a fascinating 
insight into how these cars were made. On the way over there we met with 
fellow quattro lister Jens Roesner and friends for a chat and Audi 
admiration. Thanks Jens, for the great time- and the excellent book!
The 200 quattro picked up a rock in its tyre tread which destroyed it, 
leaving a hole of almost 1x1 cm. Luckily, the local tyre specialist had one 
in stock and changed it while we waited. The UrQ wasn't so lucky, eating 
its clutch release bearing while we were participating in the run around 
Ingolstadt. It's being repaired as I write this, the owner staying in 
Germany in order to have it fixed.

We camped in a small town in the beautiful Alzmuehltal valley, while most 
of the other quattro owners participating preferred the luxury of a hotel 
in Ingolstadt. While it was definately more fun than staying in a hotel, 
camping proved to be not so good for me. I'm turning in to enjoy a good 
night's sleep after five nights of hardly any sleep in that @#$@$% tent...

Tom