Ingolstadt visit

[Tom Nas]

Hi all,

Just a brief report of our trip to Ingolstadt, from which we've returned 
yesterday. We've traveled 2323 km from Zeist, NL to Ingolstadt and driving 
around in the surrounding area (with trips to Zwickau for the August Horch 
museum and to Leipzig). Our group consisted of nine persons, two CGTs, one 
UrQ, one 200 Avant q, one 90 and one Nissan 200SX (hey, it needed airing 
and it's the ideal Autobahn car). No breakdowns, just great driving.
If you're ever able to visit Germany, be sure to take in Ingolstadt and the 
fabulous new Museum Mobile. A very avantgarde building with a superb 
high-tech presentation and immaculately restored milestone cars and 
motorbikes from the history of Auto Union and NSU, superb multimedia 
presentations and working models of many technical innovations. Lots of 
motorsport history, from rally and racing. All famous prototypes are there, 
like the Avus quattro, the quattro Spyder and the proposed mid-engined 
Group B car. There's a display with cars on shelves which rotate through 
the building with the help of a chain construction, very ingenious and 
beautiful). A car which most of us wanted to have most was the '89 V8 Avant 
one-off made for Herr und Frau Piech for their personal transport, 
beautiful and unique. Although we'd seen it before, the factory tour was 
pretty interesting as well. We saw the pre-production series of the 
forthcoming A4 Avant (due out in September) being made, with lots of 
adjustments to the production line and hand fettling.
As ever, the surrounding terrain contained lots of superb cars (Audi had 
opened up the square in front of the delivery centre for our cars and drove 
a Sport quattro out of storage for the occasion). Lots of A8Ls (including 
the new 6.0 W12), several allroads, RS4s (including the new RS4 sport, 
specs forthcoming) and even a pre-production RS6 (geez, that's one h*ll of 
a powerful-looking car!). The TT is about as common in Ingolstadt as the VW 
Golf is here in Holland. We checked out Audi Sport's headquarters (not open 
to the public, but the great Le Mans transporter was in the yard) and paid 
a visit to Hohenester tuning, famous for their extraction of lots of 
horsepower from 5-cylinder engines in the '80s. Their trophy-laden office 
was interesting, as was their yard with a Sport quattro in for servicing, 
an S6 and two superb 200q20vs (which seem to be held in high regard in 
Germany, as the ones we've seen were mostly in as-new condition).
We had to give up our plans for camping in the Altmuehl valley near 
Ingolstadt due to bad weather, though the small hotel we found was an 
excellent substitute. Later in the week when weather improved, we went 
camping anyway.
Though logic and fuel prices dictated that we travel together to events, in 
the end the superb roads around the Altmuehl valley were so enticing that 
each just took his own car. It's just impossible to describe the great 
roads there, lots of curves and steep hills, superb driving. We found out 
the my brother's Nissan 200SX runs off the speedo at 240+ kmh full blast, 
no place like Germany for high-speed driving.
Unfortunately, we found the Neckarsulm plant (A2, A6, A8) closed on both 
the journey to and from Ingolstadt, I would've enjoyed another tour there 
as well.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun for a bunch of total Audi nuts, sensory 
overload when driving though the Altmuehl valley and drinking huge glasses 
of excellent local beer. Highly recommended!
I'll scan the best pics when they've been developed and put them up on the 
web for anyone interested.

Tom
(trying to adjust to driving slowly on boring roads)