Dutch Motor Show report (long)

[Tom Nas <tnas@euronet.nl>]

OK, so I visited the Dutch Motor Show on Monday, didn't have time to write
my report until today.

We had some snow Sunday night- not a lot, but apparently 2in is enough to
paralyze traffic completely. The usual 250 km of traffic jams in the
country had increased to neigh-on 1000 km on Monday morning, there wasn't a
road without traffic jams.
By some stroke of luck though, what was theoretically the worst highway to
be on- the one leading to Amsterdam was clear but for a small jam just
before the RAI exit.

Anyway- the show itself was pretty good with plenty of rally and racing
cars on show as well as a couple of protos and new cars.

Audi had a nice stand, shaped to look like a UFO and made from very
expensive materials. There were three TTs, one in each colour (silver, blue
and black), and two of them were 180 hp quattros (still not available
here). There were huge amounts of people around the TTs, all gawping and
drooling. Next to the TTs were displays showing the A8's quattro drivetrain
(cool!), the 1.8T engine and the 32v V8 engine.
On the other side of the stand was the S3 (exclusive world premiere,
looking awesome with the S4 wheels and the butcher bumpers). The Dfl
112,600 (approx $55k) price was not so impressive, though. The 5-door A3
has been introduced as well, but wasn't on display here. There was an S4
Avant in RS blue and a couple of new A4s. The S4 was still based on the
'old' A4, BTW.
quattro GmbH had done their best to embellish an A6 quattro, and there were
a couple of other A6es around. The new A8 was on the top floor of the
stand, accessible only for the well-heeled and VIPs.
Audi had put up a tent in a pond on the terrain where an ice show was
given, with a 'skating' TT quattro as the finale. There were plenty of
interested people to see it- so much in fact that I didn't bother to get in
myself.

VW had a couple of nice things on display- the W12 coupe (incredibly
beautiful!) and a New Beetle decked out in mock-Delft Blue tiles (it was
well done, but I fail to see the point, really). There was also a model of
the Haldex on display, of which I took some pics.

Other interesting things on display: Hakkinen's winning F1 car, a CLK GTR
(wow!), a twin-engined A-class MB (stupid), the new Jaguar S and Rover 75,
Subaru WRC in McRae livery, a BTCC Volvo S40, BTCC Honda Accord, Nissan
R390 GT1, the Seat Bolero proto, Seat WRC, Sainz' Toyota Corolla WRC and
much more.

Pointless exhibit of the show: '61 Jaguar MkII in custom airbrush paintwork.

All in all a pretty nice day out. I managed to spend three rolls of film-
let's hope the pics turn out nicely.

Tom