Re: unintended acceleration

["superba" <superba@pacbell.net>]

Hi All,

I'm a sporadic lister;  however, I have an 81 5KT which I bought new and
lived through the junk about UI watching the value of my car plummet to near
nothing in the process.

AOA and their lawyers handled the situation very poorly.  They were taken by
lawyers and spin doctors with information that overshadowed facts.  I'm a
graduate engineer, former jet fight pilot, and probably have driven many
different cars many more miles than the average bear.  I have often wanted
my car to have some UI to no avail.  There were tests that allegedly showed
that the UI could overcome the brakes; pure hogwash.  Those of you that have
done the auto transmission tests know there is a stall test that tests the
engine RPM at which he transmission stalls under WOT or near it.  How many
of the testers have gone throught the wall?

AOA wrote some letters to the owners and even produced a video about UI
which I still have.  The shameful part is that after the matter had died
down, a very respectable newspaper, either WSJ or NYTimes, published a small
article about UI.  The gist was that the NTSB had many, many UI complaints
and Audi didn't have the most complaints, and the NTSB tended to pooh pooh
the complainers as being uninformed.

There was a class action lawsuit that I was supposed to be one of the
beneficiaries of;  my results arrived in an impressive and official looking
envelope that was totally EMPTY.  I could never get any more response out of
AOA.  However, AOA did mount a sales campaign to give UI victims a way to
buy a new Audi at a discount.  Unfortunately, that discount was not as good
as I could get from a dealer without it.

I've kept my car despite many problems with unskilled wrenches, no
negotiable value, I still liked it.

I wrote letters once or twice when Audi adopted the GM approach, hype will
overcome any problems.  Responses:  nada.

Cheers!

Jim Jordan