WAS Help Me Preserve My Repurtation IS: Procon Ten

[Geraint Lloyd]

the confusion could be because I have the Euro ETKA
6.3 (april 05)

I have a RHD UK spec golf that I brought with me to
canada when i
emigrated from europe last year.
It makes life easier when going to the stealer's for
RHD bits 'cos
they've never seen a RHD golf before.
Well they are familiar with RHD now! I must add that
the service manager
is from Birmingham (NOT the one in Alabama), but it
took 10 visits
before the whole workshop staff stopped trooping out
into the car park
to have an ogle.

As for Procon Ten
Since I was 15 in 1986 my recollection of what it was
fitted to may be a
bit hazy. I was into Minis and AH Sprites at the time,
although we had a
banana yellow 850cc Polo 1 and a 1978 passat MK1.5 GLS
as family transport.
I remember the ads for audi / procon ten on telly and
can CATEGORICALLY
confirm that the early european versions of the system
did the belt
tensioners AND the steering column. I am pretty sure
that it was a cost
option at the start and so you had a big silver
PROCON_TEN sticker
across the base of the rear screen.
Airbags arrived in europe after north america, (around
the mid 90s as I
recall). Audi submitted to the will of the masses and
the marketing men
and replaced the steering column retractor with an
airbag. From a safety
point of view, I think that this was a mistake.
Aribags make the
steering wheel softer whereas the original procon ten
pulled it out of
the way with enough force to smash it into/through the
dash if the ads
were to be believed.

I have no idea what the deal was with Procon-Ten in
north america. I
realise that this may have caused a bit of confusion
on the list, so
sorry 'bout that

Geraint


Kneale Brownson wrote:
> I believe that what Per says applies to the cabrio
in Europe.  ETKA makes a
> distinction regarding the US version of the steering
column.  The action
> Per describes may well apply to other European
models.  In the US, the
> system only connects to the seat belt tensioner.
>
>
> At 09:52 PM 9/6/2006 -0400, audiSean wrote:
>   
>> I find this interesting...
>>
>>
http://www.audifans.com/pipermail/quattro/2001-August/032008.html
>>
>> On 9/6/06, Huw Powell <audi at humanspeakers.com>
wrote:
>>     
>>>> I recall seeing a diagram and reading a
description where the
>>>> ProConTen system retracted the steering wheel in
a frontal collision;
>>>> I believe it was a wire and pulley system but I
can't find anything on
>>>> it at the moment.
>>>>         
>
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>   

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