How I got my 1st Audi...

[David Head]

Visiting my brother back in 1988, he had a 79 Audi 5000S he had
literally poured money into after buying it 'non running'. After having
it professionally rebuilt, it still didn't run right and he was totally
disgusted. I was driving a 79 CJ7 Golden Eagle I had rebuilt from the
ground up (it even had tilt wheel, woodgrain dash and AC). I called it
my 'pimp jeep' - it was a beautiful root beer metallic with the huge
eagle decal, hardtop, bored/cammed 304 V8 and quadratrak automatic. It
was willing to take me places I was too nervous to go! It also only got
14 mpg on a good day, while my 'other car' - a '66 GTO convertable got
12...
While we were growing up he came out on the bad end of every every car
deal we did together - so I told him we would swap cars and be forever
even. The Audi was worthless due to the unintended acceleration mess
(and an ugly 'baby sh*t yellow' affectionately called Dakota Beige by
the manufacturer). We swapped, I gave the distributor a 1/4 turn, reset
the idle and magically the mpg went from 16 to 26 - and off we went with
my daughter screaming and crying about 'how could I get rid of her
beautiful truck...'.
I had that car for 150,000 miles and 5 years - becoming intimately
familiar with every 'You Pull It' from San Jose to Modesto. There was
hardly a part that wasn't replaced on the car. 3 transmissions, 2
transaxles - you name it. I could swap a transaxle out of that car in
under 2 hours.
But it would run 115 mph all day long and was absolutely invisible to
the highway patrol...