Agriculture-- Climax!

[David Weiss <dzweiss@worldnet.att.net>]

Didn't realize this thread would meander here!  For those who are only
interested in useless _Audi_ trivia, please skip and pardon the BW.

The grand prize of a $65-70K US C4, or $75K, which would buy said car
and leave some money for engine mods to my V8:

(Oops, that was the Automobile magazine sweepstakes.  Grand prize here
is a one-year subscription to The Quattro List, digest version.)

Anyway, the grand prize goes to Psychotic Don't-you-dare-ticle-me Elmo,
for his dubious connection of this thread back to a quattro!  The other
posts showed the incredible collective knowledge of the list, and taught
me that I'd better do some quick research before posting a capper!

What I was getting at was an apochryphal story that the Healey 3000 had
a tractor _transmission_, which is a corruption of the apochryphal story
that it had a tractor _engine_ (as Bill Murin identified) and the fact
that the Healey 100 had a bastardized Austin tranny (as ScarfR
identified) with first gear blanked off because they couldn't find a
rear end w/ the right ratio.

Pat Moss, after winning the 1960 Liege-Rome-Liege Rally in a 3000,
complained about the car's understeer (another quattro connection?), and
mentioning the heavy "tractor engine" up front.  Geoffrey Healey has
stated emphatically that the 6 used in the 100-6 and 3000 was a BMC new
engine, designed for a car.  (The A90 4-cyl was derived from a 6-cyl
military truck, BTW.)

I read somewhere that the real 1st gear on the 100-4 was more suitable
for pulling stumps.  An overdrive was fitted on at least some, if not
most, of those cars, to give 4 speeds with reasonable top end gearing.

Now back to more Audi-specific threads, like car stereo, synthetic
oil...

--Dave Weiss
  '91 V8 5-spd
  '93 90CS UnQ