Mine was because of a film, but not the usual one, mine was the original Transporter film.
Fancying myself as a Jason Statham in his sharp suit and spare laundered shirts in the boot (yes yes, I know!
), I sold my previous car, a 2003 3.0i Z4 and started looking for a nice 7-series.
While looking for a 7-series, I saw a few A8s for sale and decided to test drive one of these too. I first tested a 3.7QS somewhere in South Wales, but found it a bit underpowered (sorry Neil & others)
Then a 2000 FL 4.2QS came up at 2nd hand trader in Oxford, 6 years old, 70,xxx miles on the clock, full history including a gearbox refurb, screen price was something like £8,695, and it was in my favourite colour of silver with black interior.
So I bought this one, agreed a price of £8,250 from memory.
And so my A8 journey began - my time owning this car coincided with it being a period of my life when money was tightest, so this was was kept for around 5 years (the longest I've ever owned a car), partly because I could not afford to change it.
It was not without problems, most notably a failed steering rack which Audi quoted around £2k to repair, which at the time was about what the car was worth, so me, my dad and my brother took it out, swapped for a refurb unit and reinstalled, over about 4 weekends up on ramps on my driveway.
I had started to think about selling in 2011, partly because of the start-up 'death rattle' (to this day I still don't know what caused that?), but then a week or so before I was due to drive it to the South of France, I had it serviced, including a gearbox service at a local 'specialist'
Test fit of roof rack before the aborted holiday trip:
And a couple of days after that, the gearbox failed terminally. Car was sold to a Polish scrapper, last seen being loading on to a truck and heading east in 2011. Had to reverse the car up the truck ramps, as it simply would not drive up forwards with the gearbox fault.
