Windshield cards and etiquette

[Andrew Buc]

For a few years now, I've been laser-printing basic information about
www.audifans.com (the URL, the benefits) onto blank business cards and leaving
them under the windshield wipers of parked Audis. I got the idea from
recruitment flyers that I used to have printed for various marque clubs I
belonged to pre-Internet.

A while back I left one of these cards on the windshield of an existing lister,
who commented on it, on either the national or the Pacific NW list. At that
point I offered to email the Word file to anyone who wanted to produce and
distribute the cards, and I got a few takers.

I recently left a card on a 5000,  and when I got 6 or 8 feet away, the owner
came into view and got rather surly about my having left it. I threw the issue
out on the chit-chat forum of another, totally non-car-related website, without
mentioning audifans.com by name, and sentiment pretty much ran against me. A
couple of the comments were, "My car is my personal space, and that's an
invasion. That's like the sticking the card down the front of my shirt without
my leave," and "Why should I have the burden of disposing of the card?"

Any thoughts on this? Should I (and anyone else doing it) quit doing it? I
certainly don't want to give the site a black eye.