[V8] Book announcement: Audi V8, Edition Audi Tradition

[Bastian Preindl]

Dear fans of the Audi V8,

as most of you may know, I'm driving V8s since more than 10 years and those
underdogs became my number one leisure activity in no time. Some of you may have
also noticed my affection to posting long answers - yes, I love writing! Some
years ago, blessed with too much spare time (even though I have to maintain
three of those tanks), I turned one of my long-term daydreams into reality. I
started writing a book about the Audi V8 D1.

First steps were easy: I grabbed together everything I was able to get hold of
(thanks to you guys for supporting me with the one or other scan of old stuff!),
stacked up multiple piles of V8 literature (next to the ones I had alraedy
collected in the past), bought several pounds of old car magazines and indexed
all the material. After making a plan how a book about a car with that kind of a
many-sided history would have to be structured and after extracting the
essential information from all those different sources, I started to write the
book chapter for chapter right away.

I had in mind that the time will come that I'd have to get in touch with Audi
for several reasons, but I didn't want to show up with big plans but
empty-handed - you know that kind of people, a lot of talking but no actions.
That wasn't the outward impression I wanted do create, so I really wanted to
have a first verison of the manuscript ready before I wrote my first letter to
those guys in Ingolstadt.

Reasons are manifold why I wanted to have Audi Tradition with me with that
project - first of all, access to information. Yes, you can buy a surprisingly
large amount of literature online, but there's still a lot of data which never
found its way outside the archives. And I simply had the claim to have it all in
the book - everything there is to know about the D1(1), not least 'cause that's
what I often miss in books of that kind. And not only written information is
valuable, the memories of contemporary witnesses are even more interesting. And
last but not least, I had no photographic usage rights, not for a single image
(except for the ones I've made myself now and then - not the right stuff for
serious publication).

So I chose the naive way and wrote to Audi Tradition, roughly describing what I
was after and what kind of support I'd hope to get from them. To my honet
surprise I was invited to visit the archive of Audi Tradition shortly after that
in order to research for whatever I could need under supervision. That happened
in spring of 2011, one year after I'd started to work on the project. To tell
the thruth I drove to Ingolstadt with the goal of gathering as much information
and images together as I was able to, being sure that this would stay my one and
only chance to enter the hallowed halls of Audi Tradtion - but it turned out
differently.

Apparantly I was really lucky as, most important, nobody else inside or outside
Audi was (officially) working on a book about the Audi V8, so there was no
conflict of interest with anybody else. Additionally, Audi itself was pretty
curious about the whole story of the V8. And last but not least a monographic
book about the D1 fitted good into their publication plans and would be perfect
for the 25 year premium class celebration in 2013. As you can see, it didn't
work out for 2013 for several reasons, but better late than never.

I wouldn't say that everything was straight forward from that day on and that it
was a cake walk to bring that project to a good ending, but it was definetely
the most joyful and exciting challenge I'd ever accepted. It was still my
project, so whatever I wanted to achieve was still up to myself to accomplish,
even though I now had official Audi support, so in case of anybody being in
doubt of the reliability of the project, Audi was there to back it up. And that
was good for the really thrilling part, namely getting in touch with all the
guys who had their hands on the V8 back in the early and late 80's and early
90's.

Starting with the names I got from the publications I'd studied earlier (there
is a really good one from SAE in English, for example), I worked myself from one
person to the next, meeting several of those people personally, some of them
already retired, others not working for Audi any more since ages, and some who
have climbed up the career leather in the meanwhile, having been CTO or CEO for
a while. Pretty much everybody had a lot of stories to tell and some names up
their sleeves who I could contact as well.

At a certain point I had recorded personal memories for virtually every topic I
could think of regarding the V8, like the development, motor sport achievements,
tech stuff, marketing, strategic decisions, and dozens of other subjects. So it
was time to weave everything together and to finalize what was up to become the
book you will be able to buy in a few days from now. Audi, in the meantime,
helped me to find a publisher for the book, and not very surprisingly, but to my
very pleasure, they chose their regular publisher, namely Delius Klasing. They
took care of the book's layout and typesetting and how all that stuff can fit
into less than 200 pages while I was hunting down the last images I was very
keen on having in the final book.

And after more than four years of continuous work, spending numerous days off in
Germany and Austria meeting former employees and collecting material, the book
is now finally on the brink of being launched. Unfortunately, it has - for now
at least - one major handicap for you guys, as it is only published in German.
As more than half of the V8s were sold to countries not speaking German, it
would absolutely make sense to have it published in English too, but the
publisher is for safety first. Without having any kind of promises neither from
Audi nor the publisher, I could imagine that an English version is in scope if
the German version is sold above expectations.

The book can be ordered online already with several traders, a sneak preview can
be downloaded on the publisher's site:

http://www.delius-klasing.de/buecher/Audi+V8.179136.html
(http://www.delius-klasing.de/sixcms/media.php/9/Audi%20V8_LP.pdf)

Maybe the one or the other connives at the language barrier and enjoys the first
(official) book dealing with our love-hated underdogs - in worst case, it's a
great picture book with images you've certainly never seen before :-)

Have fun

Bastian