Special UrQs at 88 Calgary Winter Olympics?

[Zsolt]

Hi Ian and list,

I have one of the Olympic cars as well. I was just recently chatting
with the guy who at the time was working for Audi and was responsible
for the fleet. He said, that there were 200 cars split between sedans
and avants. They were more or less distributed evenly between 3 dealers
in town.

Originally they did not have the pin stripes or the rings, and they were
put on here in Calgary. The pinstripes are black on top, red in the
centre and gold on the bottom, and IMHO quite tacky. (I am in the
process of removing them.)

They all came with two sets of tires, summer/winter.

The interior is leather with suede inserts and door panels, but this was
not unique to the Calgary Olympic cars. AFAIK there are other listers
who do not have the Calgary Olympic cars but have the suede combo interior.

I have to talk to this guy in the near future, and I will ask him if he
knows anything about the white Ur quattros.

Cheers,
   Zsolt

Dr. Ian McArthur wrote:
> 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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