[s-cars] Teen car

[qshipq at aol.com]

 Just btdoint with my two as well, 17&18yo daughters...  As the wretched-wrench father that could choose any vehicle for the lassies, I stayed Audi, and also went manual trans.  I decided non-quattro to start, laws of physics skillsets need to be learned first.  I chose manual trans, because my dad did, and it is a good discouragement to having other teens driving the car...  And it has a coolness factor that can overcome faded paint and dings.  The long forgotten Audi Coupe GT was an obvious choice to accompany my 3 urq's.  Car&Driver rated them Ten Best rides every year they did Ten Bests, including 1988 when the CGT wasn't available here.

They are bulletproof in every respect, cheap to operate, and truly a pleasure to drive, even for their dad.  Great brakes, great mileage, 14in tires are cheap, and they drive with a gusto personality that I just don't find in many of the newer 4ringed machines.   The doors have those old-school internal pipe-type side bars in them, the bumpers have meat that gives any newer car a run for the front/rear end money. The I5 makes all cool sounds, yet at 115hp (86) and 130hp (87.5) respectively, they certainly aren't going to be placed in the hot rod bin.  I've also bought and turned another 6 to other families looking for that good basic teen transport.

I put a set of Hokka NRW on the elder daughter's 87.5, and use them as a all-season, because the car is light enough to do so.  She's also done a ACNA Teen Clinic with them without showing any abusive wear.  With said tires vs a 4kq with all seasons, the CGT could go anywhere the 4kq could during the winter months.  

Pre-87.5 CGT use disc/drum brake combo, the 87.5 uses disc/disc combo.  The disc/drum actually has better stopping power, but the disc/disc has better progression for a non abs car.  I've had both setups in the driveway for years, and can't say *I* prefer one over the other, but I know at threshold my daughters would probably do better with the disc/disc.

All the other debates on which trans I think is irrelevant, and I didn't use any of that 'learning' curve to make the choice.  I grew up with the 'first you learn to drive a manual', and I just carried on the tradition.  Without question, *THE* requirement for any teen, is as many teen clinics as their busy schedule allows.  I've instructed at a couple dozen Teen Clinics in the last 10 years, and find the reward to both student and instructor higher than any other DE.  Second comes the Steamboat Ice Events (shameless plug for my Gruppe-q event www.usaudiclub.com).  In the last auto-x runs of our Chicago ACNA events, the students take mom or dad out.  The enthusiam from both the parent and the student is the reward for both making the commitment to increasing a teen driver's skillset.

And back to the CGT, I've said many times my favorite comparo is driving a CGT, thinking "man a car like this with awd and a turbo would be awesome".  Grab another set of keys:  Yessir it is!  And nothing is lost on the CGT in terms of spirited chassis dynamics that makes the urq the grand tourer it is.  Finally, I just picked up another single-owner 86 CGT autobox with 86k in it.  It's absolutely mint as delivered from the factory, and it will also be hard to flip, because it has all the same CGT personality without the clutch.

My .02 arbitraged thru the peso

Scott J


 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Bares, Vittorio <Vittorio.Bares at nuance.com>
To: Peter Schulz <pcschulz at comcast.net>; Brian Armstead <barmstea at voanews.com>
Cc: erikaddy at yahoo.com; s-car-list at audifans.com
Sent: Tue, Dec 8, 2009 9:41 am
Subject: Re: [s-cars] Teen car


I'm just finishing up teaching twins how to drive (have a 19yr old also)
- one has her license, the other will be testing before xmass.

They learned on a manual transmission car. Their own comments indicate
to me that they appreciate the attention required to operate a manual
(their comparison is the drivers ed automatic they drove).

Yes, gear selection, proper clutching and focusing on smooth driving is
complex for them at first. However, my daughter became accustomed to it
fairly quickly, she was double clutch downshifting by the time she
tested.

My point is that there is a learning curve - however it is not a
sufficient reason to eliminate manual for teens.

I did use our only automatic vehicle, an crew cab F250 diesel (not
optimal due to its size) to get them started in figuring out how to use
the brake and gas, how far to turn the wheel, etc..that only took a
couple of trips before we got into the manual cars.

When you are in a vehicle - you should be accustomed to and practice
dealing with many inputs, filtering the inputs and applying the proper
outputs to the vehicle based on the situation you're in. Clearly
throwing too much at anyone is not a good idea, but progressively adding
components allows the student to feel confident they can make good
decisions when lots of stuff is going on around them.

IMO I think automatics make people mentally lazy while in their vehicles
and are generally not a positive addition to the overall safety on the
road.

Vittorio -