Special UrQs at 88 Calgary Winter Olympics?

[Dr. Ian McArthur]

I never heard of white UrQs at the 88 Calgary Olympics but I'll check with
the local Audi guys.

There were, however, a large number of special edition 5000TQs.  I have
heard numbers ranging from 62 to 88 to 200.  The cars were given to
journalists to commute between Calgary and the Canmore venues.  I understand
the police had difficulties with speeders.  Seems the Europeans thought the
trans Canada highway was an autobahn.  There are stories of RCMP highway
patrol guys trying to figure out which of the fifty or so red Audis in the
parking lot was the one they were trying to catch on the highway.  There is
also a rumor that Audi paid the speeding tickets.

These cars were split between sedans and avants.  All were red with a red/
yellow / black stripe (German flag colours) above the black side moldings.
They have black leather upholstery with black alantra (?: suede?) panels in
the seat and back panel and on the doors.  I believe they were sort of hand
built.

All of the cars originally had gold Audi rings on the front doors and some
Audi and Olympic lettering.

An interesting piece of folk lore is that the Calgary Olympic Committee were
being especially overbearing about copyright to the five Olympic ring
symbols.  They even tried to force the "Olympic Cafe" (which had been around
forever) to change their name or get sued for copyright infringement.  The
story goes that the Olympic Committee demanded that Audi remove their
four-ring symbols from the doors of the cars or they would get sued.  This
after Audi donates a flock of cars...

Well, apparently Audi pointed out that there was little likelihood of anyone
mistaking a car for a down hill skier and pointed out that if it was
determined that the Audi rings and the Olympic rings were similar enough to
be confused under the copyright laws, then the Olympic committee would have
to remove all of their five-ring symbols from everything since Audi holds a
copyright to the four-ring Audi trademark that pre-dates the five ring
Olympic trademark.

The issue was resolved with Audi agreeing to change the text on the doors,
but retain the four rings.  Audi also agreed to remove the signage after the
Olympics and before they sold the cars.  The three-colour stripes were left
on the cars and I think many retained the Audi rings (with only the Olympic
text removed).  All of the cars were subsequently sold in Canada.

My cousin and I have two of these cars in Calgary (a sedan and an avant) and
know of several others in the area.  We took the sedan to the Audi meet at
the Monterey Historics a few years back.  We have seen several cars that
still have the original gold rings on the doors and have produced
reproductions which we have distributed to anyone we have found with one of
the cars.

There are rumors that these cars are worth a lot of money as collector's
items but this is untrue.  We paid $6,000 CDN for the sedan and $3000 CDN
for the Avant.  A cherry example with only 100,000 kms was listed last month
for $6,500 CDN.

If anyone wants more info on these cars, let me know.

Ian

-----Original Message-----
From: quattro-admin at audifans.com [mailto:quattro-admin at audifans.com]On
Behalf Of Brady Moffatt
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 9:15 AM
To: quattro; urq
Subject: Special UrQs at 88 Calgary Winter Olympics?


Hi All,

I was chatting with my q mechanic yesterday and he mentioned something quite
interesting.

During the winter Olympics of 1988 in Calgary, the (West) German team had
the use of 5 white 1988 UrQs. Apparently, after the Olympics they were sold,
because Audi didn't want to transport them back to Europe. At the time, my
mechanic was offered them, but 5 new UrQs, even at a good price, are still
quite pricey. He had to decline.

Does anyone have any info on these cars? I don't know if they had any
special markings or not.

Cheers,
Brady Moffatt
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
86 4kq with 299,000km
86 4kq parts car
72 Datsun 240Z with 180,000 miles
92 VW Golf with 192,000km FOR SALE
in early stages of quattrosis accumulatus


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