...and damn was it cold. But more importantly, I have never seen so many Audis I my life! It was amazing! That is what I imagine heaven to be like. Every other car was an A4 (lots of 1.8s and TDIs) and still more were A3s, A6s and A8s. I even managed to see a couple TTs (black looks ever better than the silver, if you can believe that's possible). Wow! It was incredible. Oh, and the Passats and Skoda Octavias (Jettas) and the new Mercedes S-Class...<p>So anyway, ever car in Europe (it seems) has amber rear turn signals (even the Pontiac Transport and "slant-tailed" Cadillac Seville I saw). So why does Audi send only us in the USA the red rear signaled cars? I know, in the grand scheme of things, that this is really not that important, but I am personally biased towards the amber ones and tend to obsess on occasion. Anyone have a clue?

Because of varying laws within the European Community, there are build standards that have evolved as hybrids between the 15+ national laws. The most common solution in automotive design is to build two "Euro Spec" versions, one right hand drive and one left hand drive with minor modifications to the left hand drive version for the requirements of certain Eastern European countries. In some countries amber rear signals are required, and in some countries red rear signals are acceptable.<p>There was a story or a write-in-column on taillights in a magazine (R&T?) a couple years back with the editor replying (paraphrased), "Auto makers build amber when amber is always acceptable and red is only sometimes acceptable in the target market. A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not neccessarily a square."<p>I only remember the rectangle/square red/amber comparison, but that was the only good question asked in the write-in for that issue.<p>Cameron<br>

Hey Cameron, <p>I do not know where you are, but I have never seen a red rear turn signal in Europe anywhere. I know for a fact that in my home country, Hungary, you can not import a car with red rear turn signals. You have to install the Euro spec lights all around.<p>I guess Audi came up with the all red lights for the US market to please Americans. No other foreign make I know of ever offered a red turn signal (there were a few probably though). This was another way of trying to differentiate itself from the crowd (like 3year/50000 mi free maintenance, etc.).<p>

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and red turn signal only in US. But isn't that normal. I mean American always want to do things differently from Europe anyway. Look at the sports for example, baseball instead of cricket, american football instead of rugby, imperial measurement instead of metric,driving on the left instead of right and I can go on forever...............