[V8] More V8 musings....

[Roger M. Woodbury]

I have been feeding my V8 lust with exploring the Internet looking for
pictures of V8s in different colors.  I frequently look at Jeremy's V8 Q
site, since that appears to be the current mother lode of V8 color
variations, but I am also looking and sometimes downloading pictures of V8s
in different colors from other sites.

It seems to me that relatively few V8s were imported except in the typical
colors...silver, medium blue, dark red of one sort or another, white pearl
and black.  My personal favorite seems to come back to black with black
interior, but I would love to see a Viper green 'in the flesh' as well as
bamboo.

I also wonder if Audi imported cars in only a few colors based on their
perception of what the market wanted.  I know that Porsche did this, and was
told by my first Porsche dealer that if they didn't specify the colors that
they wanted well in advance, then they would have little to chose from,
other than the "normal" Porsche colors which were silver, guards red, white,
black....all others were special order.  

When my wife and I bought our 912, we had the very devil of a time deciding
which to buy because cheek by jowl on the showroom floor were two that were
equally fetching.  One was a color which looked like the V8's bamboo and the
other was sepia brown.  Both cars had crested hubcaps on chrome wheels
(alloys were VERY exotic in those days, and almost unheard of except in
911's).  Both cars had the Porsche wood rim steering wheel (worth about
$2,000 today as a collector item).  Both cars had been special order by the
dealer, and the optional paint was $250.  We opted for the sepia brown
coupe, although as I recall, the lighter colored car had a sunroof, and the
added cost of the sunroof probably was what helped make the decision.

I do not remember how Audi marketed the V8 through its product run, as I
wasn't interested.  In those days I was driving a Mercedes diesel, and
although I had driven an Audi Turbo when it first came out...the dealer was
a client of mine, and insisted that I drive it one snowy day in central
Maine...and although I was VERY impressed by what the car would do in six
inches of snow knowing what my Mercedes 190D would do without snow tires, I
still couldn't see what was so special about the Audi.  At any rate, I
suspect that most V8's were sold off the lot, and if the dealer could get an
Audi customer to spring for the big bucks for such a nondescript, no,
downright stodgy looking sedan at such a high price, then color was a
secondary consideration.

Still and all, I would love to know how many V8s in each color actually made
it to this country, and what the original geographic dispersion of them
was...probably impossible to find all of that out, now.

I am also impressed by how much better some of these cars look with larger
wheels, although some of the wheels that have been put on the cars look
rather garish, imho.  Clearly 17" wheels look good in the wheel wells
though.  

For those of you who are hanging on the latest chapter of my V8 "soap opera"
(yeah, RIGHT!  Your numbers are legion, I am sure!), the color preference
remains black/black.  I have only seen pictures of dark green once, and like
some of the other colors that never seem to appear.  

I think that 2006 will see my return to the V8 fold.  Maybe.  The color
watch continues.

Roger