What led you to your '8?

[MikkiJayne]

Originally Posted by tintin

which piqued my interest in "luxobarges" (although I hate that term!).

I prefer rocket couch

Mine was entirely accidental. I was shopping for an A6 Avant back in 2001 to carry servers to customer sites, and walked in to the Audi dealership next to the office carrying a tape measure. As soon as the sales manager saw me measuring the boot he appeared to teleport out of his office to right by my side and asked what I was looking for.

"Something that can eat up the miles and has a big boot, for about £15K" was my spec. I knew that wouldn't buy a used A6 from a dealer at the time, but it would buy one privately.

"Aha", he said, "meet me outside in a moment" and disappeared in to the back.

A few minutes later he arrived out the front with a 1999 A8 3.7 quattro, in silver with black leather, and I was smitten They had just taken it in px against a new one, the previous owner having put 90K on it in 2 years. With that mileage they wouldn't put it on the forecourt and so were going to send it for auction where, I imagine, such a thing would have brought a lot less than my budget. Mysteriously though, given I had mentioned my budget, he could let me have it for exactly 15K, which was nice. I didn't even haggle and bought it on the spot

I absolutely adored that car and put another 120K on it until the gearbox died, 6 months before A8parts started up (about 2005 I think?). No one appeared to be rebuilding them back then and a new one was out of the question so I px'd it for something mundane. I had a succession of A4s and A6s, but I pined for the 8 every day for the next ten years until I was able to buy my Dolphin Grey S8.

Now I have seven of them