well my old 1994 A8 4.2Q was getting a bit long in the tooth - 280,000 miles, doors misaligned/dropping, seats tired, gearbox clunky but it was the steering problem which was getting worse and worse. This is where for no reason it looses all PAS - usually in a car park, sometimes going round corners
The cost of the new rack/column was not the issue (alone) but the labour in doing the job and to a car that was not worth much anyway. However, I still needed a tow car for my track car and the A8 did that in Spades.
Andrew in Linlithgow in Scotland had a green one for spares or repair and had done a lot of good work on it and from the description it sounded a good base. see the thread here.
http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8212
So I bought it blind and on good faith and organised for it to be transported to a Mate's garage in West Yorkshire.
The plan was to fix the driveshaft/gearbox problem and swap all the bits fro the black one to the green one thus creating one good tow car for not a lot of money - or as I thought maybe break even :-) given the price of Aluminum scrap.