What led you to your '8?

[sarg]

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.

[27litres]

Originally Posted by sarg

Mine was because of a film, but not the usual one, mine was the original Transporter film... and started looking for a nice 7-series.

You made me go and check that out! My mind's eye had thought it was a 5 series (and I recall wondering at the time why wasn't it a M5!). Glad I was wrong, it all makes a but more sense now!

[roberto]

Ronin for defo

[tintin]

Originally Posted by roberto

Ronin for defo

On again atm , on ITV4 (started at 9pm...)

[Simon Wallwork]

My wife destroyed another car unexpectedly, so I had to give her my lovely SAAB.
Being an ex car salesman, I rang a chum of mine in the trade- Lindsay 'Gus' Kerr, to see if he could trade me something.

I explained it was at short notice, and I was broke, but wanted something interesting and expensive to run.
"What about an Audi A8 he said? Wonderful cars".

I bought a 1997 Green A8 and loved it.

Figured an S8 must be better and got my 2000 FL S8 a year or so later.

Had it for about 14 years now, and still love it!