German trip

[Tom Nas]

Hi all,

For the few list members actually reading this on a Sunday, a brief report
of a trip a friend and I made to Essen, Germany yesterday in his '89
urquattro. We set out to look at some Audi dealerships there, as they're
huge, well-stocked and the cars there are usually a lot nicer than here in
Holland (no 40% new-car tax). My friend's stories weren't exaggerated- a
huge Audi Centre in Essen, filled with nice new Audis. The new A8 4.0TDI
was there, not even introduced here yet. They even ran it for a coupla
seconds, it sounded like a V8 but not like a diesel. With 650 Nm, that's
one car I'd love to drive some day.
They also had the new A3, S4 Avant and the A2 colour.storm special edition.
A couple of display cases in the showroom held all kinds of Audi
promotional stuff, and at really low prices. I bought a very nice compact
backpack with AudiSport logo at a pretty low price. Limits on my budget
prevented me from getting even more nice stuff, but they had plenty.
Their used car department was huge with more than 150 (my guess) Audis. How
about four A4 Cabs, ten A8s - one of which was a W12 - three S3s, four
S6es... lots of cars were 'Jahreswagen' from Audi AG and were full options.
Prices were generally pretty low, about 30-40% lower than what you'd pay here.
There were new S6 and RS6 Avants waiting for delivery, both were quattro
GmbH special versions with all bright trim blacked out. Looked pretty
menacing on the black RS6.
Another RS6 was parked outside, what a monster.

We'd met another Audi friend on the way there (what are the odds?) who was
en route to Audi Forum, a tuning show in Castrop-Rauxel. As C-R is only a
coupla km from Essen we decided to go there after our dealer visit. The
parking lot alone was worth checking out for any VW/Audi fan with almost
every model represented, some nice and original and some extremely customised.
The show itself was OK, though I'm not into the 'tuning' scene. You had to
admire the ingenuity and skills of some people, running MkIII Golfs with
full TT interior, chromed engines with gold-plated bolts and a Mk.I VW
Caddy pick up with Mk.IV front end. The copper/grey A8, chromed faux wire
wheels with gold-plated spokes and spinners was enough to make my stomach
turn though. Somewhat amusing was the 1998 Passat Variant with 1970's
US-style mock wood down the sides. We looked in awe at some 1980's Polo
sedans (you couldn't give them away here) where the owners had clearly
spent amounts of money that would get them into a pretty nice used Audi TT...
A 1984 80 quattro with a 20vT engine was doing pretty well in the sprint
competition, as were two S2 Coupes. I scored a coupla nice finds- like a
new-in-box turn signal for my '77 Audi 80 for only EUR 2, a 1970s Audi flag
and introductory service trainings for the type 43 200 5T and the type 89
80. Nice stuff, not a bad show overall. The sales area seemed to
concentrate on boom boxes, under-car neon, Lexus-style taillights and huge
tailpipes.
There was a fair amount of non-German cars at the scene, especially Belgian
and Dutch and even some UK cars. I'll see if I can get the pics I took up
on the web somewhere for those interested in the German VW/Audi tuning scene.

Oh, and when you're in Germany and driving an urquattro- we managed to get
222 km/h on the speedo a coupla times, car felt rock solid.

Regards, Tom