• By Peter Orosz
    Mar 19, 2009 1:00 PM 3,856
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    Vorsprung Your Way to Goodwood This July to See Audi at Its Very Best

    Audi will be the featured marque at this year's Festival of Speed, held July 3-5. This is your last chance to see the Auto Union race cars before Audi becomes, by default, hopelessly uncool.

    It is not without a sense of unease to contemplate the meteoric rise of Audi these past few years. A company with a Gordian knot of a history best known for making slightly better Volkswagens has somehow replaced both BMW and Porsche at the bleeding edge of German design and technology. And being on top is, of course, uncool by default.

    It may already be too late. Audi is perhaps already what Porsche was in the 80s and buying an R8 these days may now perhaps be akin to purchasing a yellow 911 convertible in Thatcherite Britain.

    But none of this really matters for making up your mind whether to attend this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, where Audi will be the featured carmaker. What matters is that they will have on display the entire spectrum of Audi racing cars, including the prewar Auto Unions. With twelve and sixteen cylinders and as many straight pipes for exhausts which carried Bernd Rosemeyer to Grand Prix victories and, later on, to death.

    Read more and plan your trip at the Festival of Speed site.

    Photo Credit: VOLKER HARTMANN/AFP/Getty Images


    Send an email to Peter Orosz, the author of this post, at peter@jalopnik.com.