[V8] $3000 headlight

[Acadianlion]

I started out looking at a Youtube video about the Audi sequential 
headlight system that they are trying to get NHTSB to approve for sale 
here.  Fat chance.  And I guess I really am not all that impressed.    
Although I will admit the idea of having a display in the instrument 
cluster that lights up when the car "sees" a deer in the road before you 
can see it with the high beams on, is pretty cool.  I remember one night 
driving back to Portland from Houlton in the Interstate around ten or so 
when I went through a herd of deer spanning both lanes of the 
Interstate.  There were NO other cars on the road, and I hadn't seen any 
for about fifteen thirty miles or so.  The car I was driving at that 
time was a BMW 318 with Euro headlights which were very powerful with 
130 watt H1's in the high beams and 100 watt H4's in the low beam/high 
outer lamps. I was going something in the 95 miles per hour range when I 
saw something flicker in the road head of me.  I figured there 
might...just MIGHT be a state trooper out, even though it was very late 
and would have been very unusual to see a trooper on that deserted 
stretch of roadway sitting by the side of the road at any time. So I 
slowed to around seventy-five or so and move the car over into the left 
lane. Suddenly I saw these faces in the driver's side window...DEER 
faces, and I then saw deer faces on either side as I went through the 
herd going very fast. I have NO idea why I didn't hit something, but the 
deer were opaque until I was right on top of them.  So the new Audi 
headlight warning system would have been a great thing to have...I 
wonder how it would do if it sensed a dozen deer instead of just one.

The car that was featured on Youtube was an RS7.  Five hundred plus 
horsepower and five hundred plus pounds of torque in a STREET car. 
Absolutely insane.

But then again, those sequential headlights are really gizzie/insane, 
too.  I wonder what it would cost to replace one after it got crunched 
by a stone dropped by a dumptruck?  Probably three grand each, I'll guess.

So, for now I'll keep my V8.  Next spring when I take it out, I may 
upgrade the stock headlights to Euro's. The headlights in the car now 
are relayed on both the high and low beams, separately, and offer pretty 
good night time illumination. But a proper set of European headlamps 
would be much better and that is what I had in the long departed '93, 
which became the infamous (?) Gentleman's Express.  There's a company in 
Canada that imports new, from Germany European headlamps for the V8, at 
$1100 the pair.  The RS7 with the sequential headlamps makes those seem 
almost sane to buy and install.

Oh, yeah. I think I might like to have an RS7.  Yeah, yeah, they're 
pretty insane and after one fast dash up the Interstate, I'd probably 
lose my license forever, but it is almost enticing, the idea of all that 
torque and all that horsepower in a civilized sedan.  I might even get 
by the really ugly ass end on the thing (I wonder why Audi has forgotten 
how to design rear ends in their cars. They're as bad as the 
Banglebutted BMWs or a few years ago).  But that sound...oh, I don't 
know about that sound at all, no I really don't.  Inside that Youtube 
videoed RS7 the engine sounded like a V1 over London.  And that eight 
speed automatic transmission? Ah...well, I am not sure at all....does an 
eight speed automatic transmission EVER stop shifting?

Roger