[V8] Disgruntled about Audi on eBay

[Roger Woodbury]

Well, it's a pretty cheap way to take an international swipe at a
manufacturer, I guess.

But I wonder who actually made that transmission?  I suspect that it was
Aisen or someone like that.  Doubtful that it was ZF, but it might have
been.

My first outing with a V8 was with a tornado red 1990 that was owned by a
retired army major general who lived in Pennsylvania.  The car came to me
via the Mannheim Auto Auction and was very, VERY clean (as all those cars
are!) and had pretty low miles....less than 50k as I recall.

The history of the car was pretty good for an auction car, and I knew going
in the front door that the nose had been hit in a sheet metal only accident.
Six thousand miles later, I learned the "rest" of the story: the
transmission developed a distaste for reverse.  Entirely.

Turns out the at the car had been hit pretty good in the nose and apparently
towed from the scene by the nose.  The damage was internal to the
transmission, and according to the ZF transmission shop that fixed it,
"someone had been inside before"...their words.

About seven grand from door to door...the transmission guys sent a flat bed
up and hauled the car to the Bangor shop.  Then hauled it to the main shop
in Portland where the work was done.  The worst of it was that the pinion
gear was damaged, and that part alone was almost a grand.

Audi wanted $9000 plus exchange for a new transmission!  So rebuilding it
was cheaper and easier.  The transmission is the same as that used in seven
series BMWs and big Jaguars, PLUS the front wheel drive stuff.  The shop
that did the work was the ONLY authorized ZF dealer in northern New England.

I sold that car several months later...lost my taste for it and Audi V8's
entirely, or so I thought.  

So I am wondering who makes the $80,000 Audi transmission these days.  The
last time I was in the VW dealer's I read the sticker on the window of a new
CC, and was shocked to see that the car has Japanese parts.  Just proves
that although we beat the Axis, we just didn't kill it.

Roger