Looks quiet - back to the q-list??

[Hannu]

anybody home?

[Jason Teller]

But that is a great resource that's been around a long time. We just figured that some people might prefer a web interface. Over time I'm sure the traffic will pick up.

[SteveAngry]

and if you want more to show up how's about catering more to the do it yourselfer/older Audi owner? I cannot remember the last time you guys did an article on the main page that was "Older Audi" related. The S4 VS 4000 article does'nt count as it was insulting to most of us at the "Misc Forum." Hmmm....

Steve Ankney
88 5000
Holland, MI

[Jason Teller]

[Swedespeed1]

I'll bite. Steve Sherwood contributed the article, and while it wasn't exactly the most thorough coverage, it was what it was meant to be.... a short comparison between the two generations of cars. Would you rather we would have not printed it at all?

What did you find "insulting" about it?

I'm very curious to see how people who own older cars view this site. Our inclusion of the older cars on the forums, and on into the editorial coverage, is part of our evolution into being an Audi owner's resource from our roots as an A4-based website. We do intend to begin inclusion of the older cars, from Feature Cars (I personally love clean older car's like Ti Kan's 4K 2.0) to a project car of one of the older models (most likely a 4KQ).

[SteveAngry]

Don't compare a base model non quattro 4000 against a brand new S4. Whats the point? Surely it's not newsworthy?

If he wanted to make a point about how different the new S4 is to previous generation Audi's, why didn't he do a comparison against the UrS4? That would have made more sense to me...

The previous generation Audi's to the S4 are the A4, 90, 80, 4000, ETC. Would'nt it have made more sense to just focus on the previous generation comparison wise? Why go all the way back to the 4000? To make us feel bad? Maybe because he had one in the driveway he didn't want?

His first posting of the "S4/4000" article had to be "reworded." I think the first article is where most of the hard feelings came from. The second article was much softer...

I don't harbor any ill feeling towards Steve S. or Audiworld. I just think that that article was really useless. We older car owners don't get very much coverage. The main page article, Tech page, etc is generally biased towards the newer cars. I think that when we do get some coverage/articles it should be in a positive light. Not in the sort of light were are cars are looked down upon...

Steve Ankney
88 5000
Holland, MI

[Swedespeed1]

Yeah, I can explain what happened there, if you'd like to see the little man behind the curtain...

Steve wrote the article, primarily about two cars he owns. It wasn't the best comparison, i.e. I'd have rather seen his fwd 4K compared to a fwd 1.8T or something, but it was kind of interesting, and we are admittedly weak on older car content. So we ran it.

Now, as to the two versions, I had just come over to help manage editorial content on the site. In the past, we'd put up articles from contributors like Steve (admittedly not a writer by trade) as is. That one went up without going through me, and I insisted on editing/rewriting fixing a few flow and accuracy issues, and admittedly throwing more praise to the 4K because it is one of my favorites of the older cars (particularly the '84 older body style quattro which is actually a fairly rare car here in the states). Thus, the different versions of the article.

I'm working on upping our older car content, including vintage Auto Union coverage as well. We just launched the features section, which includes feature rides. This will help, as our primarily news mix of editorial content prior to this most obviously left us lacking on anything but the newest models.

Something we also have as a benefit from the BV merger is access to some serious coverage of Monterrey (I'm talking tons of pics from the historics in '99 as well as the Auto Union showing over at Pebble Beach. We want to run it, though obviously it is old news. Still, Vortex managed (with 4 people at that event that year, as compared to 1 for AW so I am not trying to sell that guy short), to take a ton of Audi pics, and probably has on our hard drives (doing no one any good there) the best coverage of the Audi stuff that year.

I'll get the piece together and run it, with an adjoining gallery. Whether it's now two years old is indifferent. We should run it.

[Evilclown]

I think this is a great site for gathering/exchanging ideas/organizing meets for older Audi owners, though the forum split has seemed to take away some of the solidarity of the old format, it's not nearly as bad as I'd feared. The OT forum is a neat place to check out how everyone on the site(wether they can afford to own 4 $50k+ cars or not) thinks, and the different points of view on things. But, from the strictly Audi side of things, the main page does seem to be heavily biased toward the A4/S4/TT, but then again, there's not really a whole lot you can report about a 15 year old car, is there? I would, however, love to see more older project cars, and maybe a feature every once in a while about where to find the best prices on the maintenance/upkeep parts that we're all in such dire need of, as well as where to find the best performance parts for cars that aren't B5 chassis. I, personally, love my 4k, and I've met a lot of people through this site that feel the same way about theirs, and the older cars in general. It's a passion, really. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have an A4 or S4 too, but I just can't afford one, so I need all the resources I can get my hands on about the older models, which this site does a great service for. There's always room for improvement, though, like maybe a links page dedicated to parts/preformance sites specifically for the older models.

Just my $.02, plus tax, prices may vary. Tax, tags and license extra, void where prohibited.