[V8] Ramblings

[Roger M. Woodbury]

I agree with everything you said.  I know the younger generation accepts everything being foisted off on them as “must haves”, but like other aged, febrile old farts, I truly believe that true quality is being slipped away in the interest of slick, rapid turnaround of product, and glitzy, video-game like instant gratification.  

I drove a lovely new ToeRag a year and a half ago.  It was a diesel, of course, V-10, and I simply had to drive one.  My impression was of a lovely running engine in a lousy chassis, and at 75,000 miles it would probably still pull like a train but be falling apart, if it even could be run on the road.  When I heard some of the frightening stories about service issues and the involved nature of otherwise routine maintenance, I stopped paying even the slightest attention.  I fantasized having a Passat W8 at one point when first decided to at least think about the aging 100CS Avant my wife drives and loves.  Then I heard some of the horror stories about the W8 motor, and decided that VW was rapidly becoming a Japaneseee Metooer.  

Now with 175K plus on the Audi 100CS, I am looking seriously at putting three or even four grand into the body. The car runs perfectly and without error and even a new A6 Avant will not do one thing better than the 1994 Avant does.  And the body guys who work for the wrecking yards whose job it is to dismantle these cars have told me that the newer cars suffer from body rust much more severely than does the early C4 cars. 

I have been saying for a long time the best cars have all been built, and I see no reason to believe otherwise now, and not even the howling sound of a screaming V8 piped through the seventy three carefully toned speakers in the new HarmonBose system in the newest cars can change my mind.

Roger