Another day, another story about an Audi I owned. This time I’ll evoke memories of the “dragon wagon” – my 1989 Audi 200 Turbo Quattro Avant. It seemed like a great idea at the time; I saw an advertisement for an “Audi Quattro Wagon” that was sitting in a field in New Hampshire. When I arrived with trailer to pick it up, it turned over and even ran briefly with ether but wouldn’t move. The seller wasn’t the original owner. He had picked the car up from an auction and didn’t know why it wouldn’t run or move. Over the next few months it sat in my friend’s driveway as I slowly diagnosed the problems. It was remarkably clean, and I was able to figure out that the original owner had cared for the car reasonably well – but it obviously hit a point where the repairs and condition exceeded the then-owner’s threshold for tolerance and they donated the vehicle to a charity. That probably should have told me something then, but I pushed on, first diagnosing the run condition (fuel pressure regulator leaking and bad) and then figuring out why it wouldn’t move – the clutch was completely gone.
I tried with a friend to replace the clutch without a lift, but sufficed to say, it’s a repair on Audis that is fairly involved and eventually I gave up, choosing instead to pay a mechanic to replace it. While there, it turned out the car also needed brakes (no surprise) but it ran remarkably well considering where it came from. I then used the “dragon” for the next few years at work. The odometer didn’t work, making it easier to pile miles on – which I did. So did I pile on repairs, and like my V8 ownership the “dragon” seemed destined to provide me with countless stories. It almost ran over my co-worker (without anyone driving it). Then there was the time the voltage regulator went out and I had to alternate switching on and off every electrical item in the car to avoid toasting the battery. That’s difficult in a car where half the electrical items no longer work. There was the time a friend had to rescue me in central Connecticut after the car spewed the contents of the oil pan – twice – all over Route 84 when one of the oil cooler hoses let go. I referred to it as the hard way to do an oil change. And no story of the “dragon” would be complete without the story of my now wife driving me home from the hospital; me mostly naked after having crashed my bike into a tree at pretty high speed with some resulting broken bones. The entire ride home my poor wife apologized as she tried to come to grips with the idiosyncrasies of driving the Audi, of which there were many. Finally, after one last trip to pick her up from work a few months later where the brakes locked on I had enough; I retired the Audi and sold it to my uncle as a parts car, as he had a 1988 5000CS Quattro Avant with somewhere near 500,000 miles on it. Obviously, he needed the car more than me.
But I was wrong! The car returned to life a year later; I was contacted about an ad I placed selling the car, and after helping to broker a deal with my uncle and the new owner, the “dragon” moved on and was reborn. I saw it a few times in my travels – the new owner turned up the boost and fitted large wheels and Euro lights and it certainly looked the part. The travels of the Audi were a reminder of many things – the longevity of these well built cars, the complexity of keeping a cutting edge 1980s car running, and the devotion of the Audi fan base. Here’s my suggestion though – don’t find one in a field, buy this one instead:
