Unfortunately, my new 99.5 A4 picked up a few scratches on the bumper cover and a dented grill/hood, compliments of a raised SUV bumper. :(

The good news is that my insurance suggested replacing the parts to make the car "like new."

Here's the kicker though: the hood is big-time back-ordered; "my" hood may still be in Germany! If so, it will take months to get here! Argh!

So let me be a lesson to others: don't damage your A4! Even the slightest damage and you may not see it again for months!

$&@*#!

Dan

The reason you can't get a hood is that insurance companies are required, by law, to get you both the same year part and the same intramodel, intrayear, variant. Therefore, you must have a 99.5 hood, not a 99, not a 96.

Good news is that the hood profile hasn't changed since the car was introduced in 1995, and my hood is still in perfect condition though it will need to be repainted to match your car. I don't know if it's been put on another car yet, or if it's being used for other things, but the metal hood that was originally on my car might still be in storage at Vortrag Motorsports in Warren, MI. Contact Todd Candey there and ask if my hood still in stock condition, is in use, or is available for purchase.

I have no incentive here, I don't plan on getting the money from the hood. Just trying to be helpful since I know the metal hood off my car must have gone somewhere since the composite hood presently on my car is most certainly a different hood.

Just that if your insurance co. bought my old hood to put on your car, you'd be back in business in a couple weeks.

Cameron
Now with composite vented hood...

Any pic's? Any feedback on cooling underhood temps, wind noise, etc.???

Love the hood. My car actually still has the reinforced prototype on it, which is a great hood, but the distribution hoods are even better than the prototypes with a bit more curving from the vents and even lighter weights than the proto hood on my car.

I got to see a "basis" copy of the distribution hood while I was at Vortrag, and it looks truly excellent... and with a weight of only ~10% stock, it's an amazing performance part as well.

I don't have underhood temps, though Vortrag might. I plan to have formal testing done on that on the way to Monterey since I'll have long stretches for the turbo to warm the air under the hood, and for the vacuum effect of the hood to evacuate the warm air.

It should be noted that these hoods are really an amazing story. After looking over venting designs in September of 1998, I called Todd Candey at Vortrag and asked about altered front-end parts for the A4. At the time, the A!Avantgarde System S was the most radical front-end out there, and there were no aftermarket hoods in production available from U.S. companies. Both Vortrag's 12v test car and my car had the System S front, but I wanted something more aggressive and Todd had been looking to start such a project for several months. I sent him drawings, cuts and pastes from technical drawings from magazines, and what you see today in the Vortrag vented hood design is a combination of many different efforts and concepts.

After work started on building a first hood in October of 1998, a finished prototype appeared at the February meeting of the Chicago A4 Club. The prototype was completed in less than two months, an amazing turnaround time for a part of this size with this many alterations.

Learning from this prototype, the production hoods were fabricated from a hand-made model, and, as far as I know, the hoods can be ordered from Vortrag in carbon fiber for shipment in the next few months. Last I checked, price for carbon vented hoods is in the neighborhood of $2500.