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

[Scott Phillips]

Bastian, 

While I can't read German - I took a look at the PDF and WOW!! Amazing work
which you can be very proud of. I can't wait for it to go on sale!. 

Thanks for the good works!

Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: v8-bounces at audifans.com [mailto:v8-bounces at audifans.com] On Behalf Of
Bastian Preindl
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2014 8:11 AM
To: v8 at audifans.com
Subject: [V8] Book announcement: Audi V8, Edition Audi Tradition

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
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