Sargent Schutt has sold me his pride and joy. What very well be the nicest '91 200q is now cooling it's heels in my driveway, 1934 miles of twisty roads from San Diego to Helena Montana via the most twisted and scenic routes. A fine set of Pirellis sacrificed their lives for the adventure, and it was a life well lived.
Friday morning sunrise around 5:30 found me on the Coast Highway 1 just north of Morrow Bay. The road was mine, and mine alone. I took a perverse pleasure in finding the balance of this fine machine with all windows down, sunroof open, and stereo off. (43 degrees F is warm by May standards where I come from!) I'm sure I'm not the first to discover that exiting a 20mph corner in 2nd around 1.5 bar WFO all four tires chime in perfect harmony at exactly the same time. Life is good.
Kudos to the guy in the squatty little 2somethingGT, the only traffic I saw between Morrow Bay and Monterey. I caught him from behind near the halfway point, and let me tell you, the kid could drive. He had that Volvo stretched to nine tenths, and other that an occasional fear of perhaps pushing him too far, the view was exemplary. I had little trouble keeping up, and my ego allows me to believe if we had switched cars we'd have gone just as fast. I must say it again; Life is Good.
Other notables were highway 93 North, through Sun Valley, over Galena Summit, onto Salmon Idaho. A full on ABS brake test for a herd of elk a half hour before sundown saved the pristine bodywork of my shiny red stiffy. Yes, life is good.
Chief Joseph's pass on 93 graced me with the pleasures of quattro in 3" of slushy snow on ice. I've experienced Pirelli 7000s on snow in my previous car, a Volvo 850t. Z rated rubber is obviously a compromise in these conditions, but quattro is good. Better with the ABS turned off.
During this trip, I enjoyed the complete and unabridged audio version of Dean Koontz "Seize the Night" (highly recommended). I burned 87.9 gallons of premium unleaded, paying a record $1.789 somewhere in sunny California, averaging 22 mpg. That's not bad, considering the fun on highways 1 and 93, and about 200 miles of fierce head winds at 75-80mph. The 20v used no measurable quantity of oil. I also bounced the speedo off 150mph. Twice. The q-ship was only taching 6k! I only let off to avoid tripping the ecu shut off. Life is very good. Don't tell my mom or my wife please.
I've been a quattro fan since '88. when I first purchased an '84 4ksq with 123kmi., to replace an '80 5kt. I sold that car 7 delightful years later with somewhere around 250k, to be replaced by the current '90 CQ. It still never burned a drop of oil.
It's nice to be so simple that a fine vehicle is a big part in achieving hapiness. My poor brother needs spiritual enlightenment, what ever that is. He drives a '95 Buick. Rumi gets him where he needs to go. I have no idea what he's talking about most of the time, but it sounds like a pain in the ass. We q freaks win, and life is good.
Now where will I go once enabled with Ned's chip...? the chip...
John Cassidy
'90 CQ
'91 200q (it IS mine, and life is good)