: [s-cars] Cup Holder Quandry

[Wayne Dohnal]

>Has anybody found a creative solution to the lame factory equipped cup
>holders we all know and love?
>AT

Yes!  One of the best improvements I've made to the car.  I hated having to
give up the armrest to use the cup holder, and I don't know how many cans
I've crushed absent-mindedly putting the armrest down.  I went out and
bought a bunch of aftermarket cup holders.  One of them is made to clip into
an air vent.  I had a lot of hope for that one except the slits in the S4's
vents are too closely spaced for this one's clamping mechanism.  Another one
I had high hopes for was one that has a mounting base that expands into a
standard can-sized holder, and has a larger holder at an offset.  I was
hoping to plug this one into the console cup holder and have its larger
holder stick out in front of the armrest, but the offset wasn't long enough
and it didn't work.  What I ended up doing was taking the hacksaw to both of
them, using the expanding mounting base from the second device I mentioned,
with the holder from the first one I mentioned attached to it.  It "plugs
in" to the standard console holder, and has an arm that reaches out in front
of it, supporting the new holder just in front of the armrest.  It works
great and I use it all the time.  It blocks the diff lock button slightly,
but it's still accessible and it's not like I use the diff lock very often.

The drawbacks are (1) It only holds one cup.  If my passenger needs a holder
I just pull out the cheap one that hooks onto the door sill, and (2) If my
wife drives the car the armrest runs into the new holder when she pulls the
seat forward.  She doesn't drive the car much, and I just pop it out when
she takes over the drivers seat.

Wayne Dohnal
1994 S4