Customer Reviews

Audi Quattro, 1980-91 Gold Portfolio

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This book is essentially a collection of photocopies of old road tests of the original Audi quattro, and whether you think that's a fantastic or a terrible idea depends completely on who you are and what you like.

Speaking personally, I'm an owner of a 1986 Audi Coupe GT, the little brother of the Ur-Quattro, and I've always loved the UrQ. I'm also a huge fan of automotive journalism, old car magazines, and old road tests, and I have a room full of old magazines in my house. Based on that, you can see why I think this is an extremely cool idea.

In most ways, the book lives up to its promise. It doesn't have much (or really any) in the way of new content, but it doesn't need any - the charm here is reading the period authors' opinions of the car, untinged by hero-worship or lauding a legend. They were truly evaluating it and offering their contemporary opinion of the car and its impact. If you want to know how the car truly drove and stacked up to its rivals, this is the book for you. If you want a reverent look back at the car and its legacy, I'd look for a different book.

The content itself is fascinating. There are early road tests from the major American and British magazines, including even some comparison tests--for example, a comparison of the UrQ against a Lotus Esprit turbo and a Jaguar XJ-S. There's even a long-term tests and then some articles about some related cars - a road test of a rally-trim model, a Treser-modified version, the 20V car, the Sport Quattro, and even a comparison of the UrQ with its successor, the Coupe Quattro S2. I received this book for Christmas, and after unwrapping, I could pull my nose out from between its pages. If you like the sorts of things I like, this book is irresistible.

I only have two gripes to make, one that's legitimate and one that's probably not.

The reproductions are basically photocopies of the original articles - original page numbers and all. That's nice enough in its way - it's good to see that nothing has been altered - but the photocopy method has its flaws. This results in pages that are only black-and-white, which is disappointing in cases where the original road test was in color (for example, the Car and Driver test), but since most of these magazines were primarily b&w only, I guess that's not a big deal. But unfortunately the quality of the photocopies in some cases isn't very good. Some pages were very washed out - the text was very light. It is quite literally a poor photocopy, the kind you'd do at a copy store before changing the settings and running it again. It doesn't seem as if the publishers spent much time or effort in getting the right reproduction, which is a real shame because it undermines the content.

The second, less legitimate gripe, is that I wish they had included more content on the UrQ's little brothers, the Coupe, Coupe GT, and Coupe Quattro. As a Coupe GT owner, I would have loved to have seen some road tests of it as well. To be fair, though, the only reason I'd even think that such tests could be included is that the publishers already went above and beyond to include the cars they did.

Overall, it's a great read and a great concept - I just wish the publishers had taken more time and effort with the reproduction.

One disclaimer - I work for Amazon, as a buyer for Auto parts. I have nothing to do with the Books team, and have no professional affiliation with the book or its publisher, but I'd still like to just make the disclaimer.

This is stricly for quattro fans/owners.
A British book, which is composed of many test reports (44) from the varoius automobile magazines of that era in the UK, and the US.
The US cars are covered, but most reviews are British.
Some great, and colorfull reviews, including the quattro, a 100,000 mile quattro review, the treser, sport, and even some rally cars.