A3/cont'd, various other Audi things

[tnas@dtpdirect.nl (Tom Nas, DTP Direct bv)]

Hi all,

Yesterday I mentioned seeing an A3 before its introduction here in Holland.
I bought the magazine Auto, Motor und Sport which rated the A3 #1 in its
class in safety (they held a crash test before the first cars were
delivered to the dealers) This makes a nice threesome with the A6 and A8,
which also won 'best in class'. This crash test resulted in the first
factory recall of the A3, where 4000 cars were modified so that a rupturing
of the fuel line by a broken engine mount would not reoccur.
There's also a multitest in this issue  of the VW Golf TDI/BMW 318 Compact
tds/Audi A3 TDI where the A3 came out tops, scoring 111 out of 120 possible
points.

Other interesting things: an interview with Ferdinand Piech, in which he
says among other things that his strategy for the future entails getting
more common parts between Audi and VW, therefore bringing the new car
prices down with up to 20%. Now that would be nice...

A,M und S published a test of German Audi dealers in the same issue. They
sent an A4 with ten defects for a service to a couple of Audi main dealers
('Audi Partners'). The defects were mostly obvious and should all have been
noticed and fixed in a service. The results were shocking: only one dealer
came out reasonably, fixing most of the problems. The worst didn't even
find a low brake fluid level or a brake fluid leak. A badly adjusted
headlamp was fixed by most, but one managed to get the other headlamp out
of adjustment as well... nothing new under the sun. Audi dealers are the
same everywhere, it seems.

Elsewhere in this issue: a crash test of the VW Sharan MPV which gets
'safest MPV' credit, a road test of the Porsche Boxster (great car!) and a
story about a new plastic road wheel as a replacement for alloy. The BTE II
wheel by Melber has been jointly developed with plastics giant BASF, and
weighs about 30% less than the same wheel in alloy. It's just gained TuV
approval and the manufacturer is negotiating with Audi, VW, Mercedes and
BMW about the use of this wheel on future models. What's next, plastic
engines? Is this the start of the Revell-kit car era?

Sorry for the bandwidth, just hope this info interests anybody.

I might be persuaded to translate the interview with F. Piech- drop me a
line if interested!

Bye,

Tom
1988 80 1.8S FWD

 _______________________________________________________________________
   Tom W. Nas, graphic design                        tnas@dtpdirect.nl
   DTP Direct bv                              Voice +31 (55) 5 790 799
   Apeldoorn, the Netherlands                   Fax +31 (55) 5 790 125

Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations: Negative expectations yield negative
results. Positive expectations yield negative results