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Detroit, 9:30 AM
Sat Nov 21
32 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/02/09
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10/02/09
Let's look at this again, from a non-automotive viewpoint
Would you rather see this on the beach
10/02/09
@lilwillie hides autos in the attic:
Or this in Chicago. Ya, wonder why Rio is still in the running.
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09/04/09
The model I remember most was our first aero-glassed 5000. When we'd go to town, it would almost magnetically attract awe-struck stares from onlookers astounded by the car's streamlined form. It looked like a four-wheeled spaceship, the wagons especially so with their smooth curves and close panel gaps. They had soft interior lighting, futuristic plastic textures all over the place, power everything, and all sorts of amazing gadgetry. It was smooth, slick, and went like shit when the go-button was pressed.
Now while we did have an unfairly large cash reserve in those days, we never bought the Audis because we were well off. My parents, being able-minded people, did their research and determined that the unintended acceleration issue was actually due to driver stupidity (realizing that heel-toe-friendly throttle and brake placement means that simply mashing the floor when you need to stop isn't the smart thing to do). Knowing this, and knowing that the dealers were seriously hurting for sales (to the point of nearly exiting the US market), were able to buy the amazing machines for almost half their retail price! (Though even at that price, you still had to have an on-call mechanic and bags of money in the glovebox just to keep them running.)
My parents, of course, were also smart enough to know to buy them only in five-speed stick. Paired with the peppy 2.22L Turbo 5 and the always-grippy Quattro system, the car embodied everything a spaceship should. It *was* a rocket that flew past anything on the road not specifically built to race. It was fast, it was nimble, and it didn't care if the ground was dry, wet, or even there in the first place. The driver could point it in a direction and it would go.
Not so fun were the countless ECU and secondary computer failures each and every one of our models endured. Out of six or seven owned 5000/200s, every single one had a breakdown where it spent at least one month in the shop being torn down and repaired. There were chained ECU failures, traction-distribution explosions, sudden and inexplicable no-start issues (Oh, lots of those!), and so many points where a feature would simply stop working while on the road. One of my fondest memories was of *all* the windows (sunroof included) in our second-to-last 200 suddenly retracting for no good reason, all refusing to close until we pulled the battery cables. I suppose even the finest spaceships have their off-days.
Favorite design element: All of the 200 Turbo Quattro Sportswagons (and some of the 5000s) had "Quattro" written into the lower-rear tailgate glass with a heating element. Upon turning on the rear defroster grid, it was the first visible mark to appear beneath any fog, snow, or ice. Absolutely badass and the best form of visible superiority.
Given all of this...I vote a solid crack pipe. I was just recently able to recover the last of my parents' 200s, a 1989 model blue mica wagon with a beautiful grey interior. I even got it so far as to start and run under its own power, able to move it back and forth with some slight difficulty after having been sitting in a neighbor's yard for eight years. It had 89,000 miles and was well cared for during its life under our ownership, and even I understood that fixing it was a losing proposition. I hated to see that car go, but even free is crack pipe territory for one of these. Hell, this isn't crack-pipe at all, this is an intravenous PCH. This is for the die-hard self-hating PCHer. Miles of electrical connections terminating at the first truly dense arrangement of sensors and subsystems, each one required to stay in perfect operating order for the contraption to even move in the right direction.
09/04/09
09/04/09
That said, the previous model was also called the 5000. It was only later when they synced up the US and ROW naming and this became the 100.
09/04/09
09/04/09
I do remember that Dad's 5000s needed a new door handle. He got one from a junkyard, his keys fit it!
09/04/09
The odometer has digits registered on it. The bogus-ass antenna with the retarded CHMSL...that gives it negative value, honestly.
Wait...it has California plates...I understand the logic, now. How about I give them an IOU?
09/04/09
09/04/09
[providence.craigslist.org]
09/04/09