Late A4

[Fringe Ryder <Fringe@ai.net>]

Aren't -all- Audis low-volume compared to, say, a Chevy, Toyota, or even Subaru?

California is an enormous market though, and the most important prestige
market.  Get Audis on the street, they'll wind up in T.V. shows, movies, and
collaterally in commercials.  Who can forget Maxwell Smarts cars or
Columbos, or even Sergent Friday's?  They weren't special cars (well, maybe
the Tiger was), but we -know- them.  Magnum drove a 308, Knight drove a
TransAm that spoke.  Even older cars are affected - work in suburbia on
older cars shot up after Dukes of Hazard.  (I had a chat with Gene Siskel
about this years ago - there is a culture behind bermuda shorts and black
socks in open toed sandles.  I'm glad I don't -have- that culture, but it is
real, and T.V. does affect people.)

If Audi imported a twin-turbo S4, and tried to promote it the Hollywood way,
they'd be amazed.  Heck, even BAD American shows affect the world.  Baywatch
isn't highly rated here, but is #1 in a few EU countries.  Japan in the
early '80s didn't import many American cars - but most of the ones they did
import were large black sedans.  (They liked the bad-guy image.)

</rant off>

>From: quk@sievers.com (Phil Payne)
>In message <199702060052.QAA01177@sled> steveb@falcon.kla.com (Steven
Buchholz) writes:
>>                                                ... and if anyone else tried 
>> to drive the car to CA in the future they'd find that the car can NEVER be 
>> registered in CA!
>
>The European Union is, in this respect, already more of a single country than 
>the USA.  Maybe this is one reason why Audi is reluctant to start importing
low-
>volume models?
>