Audi Driving Experience


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June 20th 2010
Published: June 20th 2010
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Audi Drivers day, Ingolstadt

I want to start by saying that Kath has said that this is a pretty boring blog. I am hoping that she will write another blog to cover this, for all of those that don't like talking cars. I apologise in advance.
Greg

Well actually it was a 3 day driving event, and it went from Ingolstadt, in Germany, through Austria, to a hotel called Arosea Life Balance Hotel, near St Walberg, in Northern Italy.
The driver’s day program is a program where you pay Audi to have any model car of your choice to drive for three days and stay overnight in luxury accommodation. Of course, because this program is not cheap, then you have to request the best that Audi can offer, and of course, Audi’s best is also currently rated as the Worlds best Sports Car, and that is the Audi R8 Spyder. (it recently won world sports car of the year with an international press consortium)
Now this isn’t a normal car!! The engine is in the middle to rear of the car, the passenger compartment is snug, but spacious enough, and the boot is up front like a Volkswagon Beetle, and has a luggage capacity of 60 Litres. Before we could set off, Kathy and I had to remove most of our belongings from our backpacks, and stuff what we needed into my backpack, leaving the surplus of the luggage in the offices of the Audi Forum, at Ingolstadt.
We were shown the car, by the guide that was assigned to us for the morning, and given a very quick run down on the car. Then we were fed whatever we liked from the exquisite restaurant at the Audi Forum, and after that, we had free entrance to the Audi Motor Museum, which has four floors of motoring history worth Millions of Dollars.
We were then taken on a tour of the Audi Car factory and shown the complete production line of the Audi A4 motor cars, which took about 2 hours and a walking distance of about 2km. We then were able to jump into the car, familiarize ourselves with the navigation system and go on a drive to Italy.
Now for the past 30 odd years, I have been driving a car, and always on the Left hand side of the road. Sitting on the left hand side of the car with a steering wheel in your hand is something that really tests your senses, and bloody hell it makes you concentrate. Especially when the car that you are in control of is worth 180,000 Euros in Germany, or when it gets to Australia, it sells for $A370,000
As I started the car for the first time, the audio note from the exhaust pipes was something that had to be heard to believe. Not only is this one of the top cars in the world, it has an unbelievable exhaust note. Audi have built a waste gate into the mufflers, so that when a certain amount of gasses pass through the exhaust, the gates open, and the exhaust gets louder. And it sounds FANTASTIC!!
So we got into the car, opened the roof up, and headed out of the Audi Forum, at Ingolstadt….. on the wrong side of the driveway. Oops, quick correction before a car came around the corner, thanks very much. We were away.
The GPS quickly takes us away from the Audi Forum and within minutes, we are on the Autobahn, heading towards Munich, in the South. After a couple of minutes to build up
Arosea Life Balance HotelArosea Life Balance HotelArosea Life Balance Hotel

Hotel in the Alps of Italy. 4km from a Ski Resort
the confidence in the new car, driving on the right hand side of the freeway, I brought the car up to about 140km/hour. Bloody hell, I’m the slowest car on the road, but the best looking.
With its huge wheels, sweeping lines, typical Audi grill, and perfect finish, the Audi R8 Spyder is definitely a head turner. You could almost guarantee that the car behind you was going to try their hardest to either keep up with you, or overtake you, and the car is always the centre of attention. We parked the car in an out of the way place in a town on the German/ Austrian border, and went for a quick walk into town. When we came back people were going up and having a good look at the car. A fellow driving a V12 Jag parked behind me at a petrol station and hopped out of his car, and came up to me sprouting something I couldn’t understand in German, then he gave me the thumbs up and said Audi R8 Spyder. He wouldn’t leave to go back this car until I started the car and gave it a rev for him. He hopped back into his car with a beaming grin. That is the lure of these cars. Guys in trucks tooted and gave us the thumbs up as they drove past in Italy.
But driving it is something else.
The car has a V10 5.2 litre fuel injected motor, linked to a 6 speed synchronous transmission. It can be either driven in Automatic mode, by knocking the gear lever to the left at any time, or you can drive it as a manual by either knocking the gear lever forward or backwards to change gears, or you can use the paddles located either side of the steering wheel to change gears manually as well. You can change to manual mode at any time simply by touching the paddles or gear lever. It’s easy.
We drove South, beyond Munich, and there in front of us, was a wall of mountains, some still with snow on top. As we approached, both the camera and the video were both being used. The views were breathtaking. The traffic was quite heavy at this stage, but I managed to give the car a squirt a couple of times. Before too long, we were in the small town of Partenkirchen which is about 5km north of the border between Germany and Austria. The GPS had diverted us from the Autobarn into this small town, so we decided to get out and have a look around. The town was the start of the Alpine district, and under a wooden set of slats down the centre of the mall area, ran a small creek. There were people walking around the town with the traditional leather pants from Austria, and others walking with ski stocks, to help them on the mountain walking paths. We also had a look in a schnapps museum.
We left Partenkirchen and continued south along the roads suggested by the GPS. There were two choices given to us for the way south, and we chose the slower route, which gives less Autobahn driving, and more scenic roads. We drove down a valley towards Innsbruck, and could see the autobahn above The autobahn in this area drives down a valley called the Brenner pass. This is a very famous pass, and in this valley is an autobahn, a railway, and a scenic road. Our path was down the scenic road, and about 10km past the town of Brenner, the road took a right turn, into a small town, and to a shortcut to Merano, Italy, which is where the turnoff to the hotel accommodation lies. When I say shortcut, if you draw a straight line from the town, to Merano, the distance would be shorter than the Autobahn route, however the autobahn route is using roads that you can average 140km/hour, and runs in straight lines. The path that we were travelling on was directly over a mountain range that was 2500 metres high, with a ski resort at the top. As you can imagine, when you have these roads, they snake backwards and forwards up the mountain in ever decreasing circles. Although it seemed about a metre wider than a normal car, the R8 loved it. Come out of a corner, and put the boot in, hear the exhaust roar with excitement, and then brake for the next corner. Brake on for the next corner, throw the wheel around, and at the apex of the corner, let the wheel spin back to centre and put the boot back in. What an experience, and what power the car had in the hills. The car was a blast on the Autobahn, but with its 4WD and the Audi anti skid system in place, the handling on these alpine roads made the drive great. And with the views thrown in, it was the drive of a lifetime!!
Although we were driving at a pretty cracking pace, and only had a couple of stops on the way, we looked at the navigation system in the car and it showed that we still had 1 1/2 hours to go to our destination. The suggested 5 hour route was in real terms, a journey of between 5 and 7 hours. I can’t quite work out the average route times calculated by the GPS, but the only way that I could keep up with the schedule set by the GPS was to take completely no notice of the speed limits both in the country areas, and the towns. If I did this, and drove like a maniac on these tiny Italian country and alpine roads, then the time allowance fixed in the GPS would be accurate for the time that it was taking me. It seems the only way to do that was to get myself an Italian driver’s license, because that is the way that they drive!!!
We finally arrived at the Arosea Life Balance hotel at 8:50 PM… two hours after the scheduled time for the Audi Driving Experience. Luckily the kitchen had kept some food for us, because officially, they had closed for the night. The hotel is a life balance hotel which means that you can use their fitness and eating plans to get your health and life on track. Water Aerobics at 8:30am, guided 4 hour hike through the maintains starting at 9:30 et cetera. They even had a choice between life balance meals and normal gluttony meals at dinner time. Perfect!!
I missed the water aerobics in the morning as I had to check the oil in the car. We had a beautiful gluttony meal and after a bit of procrastinating decided not to take either of the 6 hour driving tours for the day, (which probably would take us about 10 hours) but instead take a trip to the local town of Bulzaro , which is about 1 hour from the hotel, and savour the local tourist experiences there. They had a beautiful square in the middle of the town, and a massive cable-car ride to the top of one of the nearby mountains which only cost about 3.5 Euro each. The views going up and down the cablecar were stunning, and on the way up we could see the local tourist attractions, consisting of huge stalactite type formations with rocks perched on top, which are a residual effect of glacial times.
I must here admit to have made a driving error on the way to bulzaro. The GPS went into cyber space on the way doen the mountain and was telling me that I was on the ring road, and to do a U turn at the first chance. I found a bus stop on the right, which I turned into, in order to follow the instructions of the GPS. This had me a little flustered at the time, because I wasn’t sure if I had really taken the wrong road, and to add to this, doing a U turn in a small town, on a tiny turny road while driving a car where rear vision is really limited to three small mirrors, and a reversing camera is not the easiest of feats.
I managed the U turn and continued on my way up the road… but on the Left Hand Side! (of course, this is the4 side that I usually drive on!! I had only gone about 50 metres up the road, and was approaching a tunnel set on an angle of 45 degrees to out path, when in front of me, and out from the tunnel shot an Italian driver in his little Renault van at hyperspace speed.
Thankfully I managed to rectify my cars position in a very quick manner, (thanks to his horn tooting) and he drove past me with both his arms out the window, yelling abuse at me as I drove past. Very embarrassed, I continued on my way, but about 2km later the guy in his little van overtook us and then stopped right in front of us. I knew it was him, as he was still yelling at us.
He jumped out of the car and with arms and mouth going at 100MPH, was yelling to me in Italian. I looked at him forlornly, and said I was Australian, and pointed to the left hand side of the road and said to him that I usually drive on that side. Poor bugger worked out that yelling was going to do him no good, so he jumped back in his car, did a U turn in front of us, and took off in disgust. He didn’t even wave as he drove back past us.
Problem was too, that by this time the GPS had worked out that we had really been going in the right direction from the start, and that my original U turn was not the way to go. I carefully performed another U turn in the car, and headed off in the right direction and on the RIGHT hand side of the road.
We had a good day in the car that day, and I took it for a bit of a blast without Kathy before dinner. After dinner, and with less people on these mad alpine roads, Kathy took the car for a bit of a spin.
Next day was go home day. We were taking the faster route home, which is calculated out at 4.5 hours driving, so that should be a lot easier to achieve in the 7 hours that we had. Kathy wanted to see the fairytale castle, that was located on the romantic road, on the way home, and as it was near Munich, I programmed it into the GPS as a stopover. In doing that, the GPS wouldn’t give me the final ETA for Ingolstadt, and what
I didn’t realize was that this would take us from most of the German Autobahns and put us on the B roads from Innsbruck to Munich. Thus, the time taken for the trip is suddenly blown out.
We had a nice lunch in the old town of Innsbruck. We didn’t know it, and had no tourist Information about Innsbruck, but the town has been built in a quite modern manner around the old town, and we drove around for about ½ an hour before parking the car in an underground car park, and walking to a pub in what we thought was the centre of the town. But it just didn’t seem like a quaint alpine town. We asked about food in one of the bars, but they didn’t have more than just sandwiches, and mentioned that there were more restaurants in the “old” part of the town. We asked where that was, and they pointed to an entrance through a wall that looked like a railway station, and said it was in there. We walked through the entrance, and a whole “old” world opened up in front of us. This is what we expected to see at Innsbruck. We had a nice but a little hurried lunch, as we knew that time was passing oh too quickly. I retrieved the car from the underground car park, while Kath went souvenir shopping, and met me at the front gate. We jumped back on the autobahn, but after a few kilometers, the GPS took us off the autobahn, onto a detour towards the fairytale castle. Kath had wanted to see it (but had mentioned several times to check time of getting there and not to worry about it if out of way- kept getting told didn’t know how to use GPS so I am not taking the blame for this one), and on the road map it seemed not to be far from the track we needed to travel. Once off the autobahn, we found ourselves once again on windy narrower roads through the mountain areas of Germany. Although the roads were not anywhere as slow as the Italian roads, they were definitely not the same speed as the autobahn, and had variable speed limits from 100km/h down to 30km/h in the many towns. Our destination was suddenly a long time away. The roads were interesting, and it was a bit different travelling behind a tractor towing a large trailer full of kids up a mountain pass.
We arrived in the car park if the fairytale castle with about 1 ½ hours to go before the car had to be back at the Audi forum, at Ingolstadt. When the GPS clocked over to the new destination it showed that we would be arriving over an hour after the centre closed for the weekend, and we had all of our luggage stored in the main office. After a quick phone call, we found that there had been a big promotion day at the Audi Forum, and our Liason there would be working late, so we went on our way, with a last shot on the Autobarn. We had some pretty good driving for the first part of the trip, but once we reached Munich, the Friday evening traffic was very heavy, and we completed the final part of the journey a little more slowly.
It was sad giving the car back at the end of the trip. It would be absolutely wonderful to own one, and such a great buzz to give it a blast on the Australian highways, but the Police would have a field day with the license, as it is very difficult keeping the car below the Australian 100km/h speed limit.
The Experience of driving such a car was wonderful, the scenery was wonderful, and I have some great memories and pictures to go with it.
The car specs are:
2010 Audi R8 Spyder
Carbon Ceramic Brembo Brakes
Carbon Signature Trim pack
5.2l V10 525 BHP motor
6 speed Dual Clutch Semi-Automatic R-Tronic Gearbox

Cost in Germany €178,801
Cost In Australia - about $A 373,000



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20th June 2010

u betta buy that car now
21st June 2010

Sounds like a blast - pity you missed the water aerobics - much more "interesting" things needing to be attended to!! Glad you made it back in one piece too! Robyn

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