[urq] First URQ in the USA

[Brandon Rogers]

That's awesome.  Thanks Peter!

We Colorado Urq guys should do a dinner soon and have Karl come - will
be all sorts of great stories...

Brandon

-----Original Message-----
From: urq-bounces at audifans.com [mailto:urq-bounces at audifans.com] On
Behalf Of Peter
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 8:34 PM
To: urq at audifans.com
Subject: [urq] First URQ in the USA


Hello..............

I had lunch today with Carl Behrer. For those of you not familiar with
him he was the service manager of Prestige Porsche Audi in Denver,
Colorado for over 30 years but more importantly he was the liaison
between the "Mother ship" and the U.S. He has some incredible stories
about Audi which he has shared over the years but today he told me the
story of the infancy of the URQ. He indicated that it all began in the
'70's when Volkswagen was building a military jeep for Germany called
the Europa. It contained the early version of the quattro system. Then
it was decided in 1979 to try and put the quattro system into a regular
automobile platform. Carl showed me pictures from Germany(which at the
time he took them were considered top
secret) taken of the underneath view of the first quattro system. It
doesn't look that much different than the first quattro's. Then, in late
1980; they shipped him the first URQ (Red in color) in the United States
for him to test.  It was intercepted by the president of Audi USA who
let his kids off-road it in the hills around Michigan. Audi AG was
furious and told Carl to go to Michigan and pick it up. My understanding
is that it was pretty beat up by the time they got it and had to do a
lot of work on it. At the time, the city of Breckenridge, Colorado had
their police drive Audi 4000's. They were having trouble with one and
they asked Carl to come up from Denver to take a look at it. He took the
URQ when he went.  I don't know how familiar you are with the town of
Breckenridge; but in the late '70s and early '80s it was struggling both
as a town and a ski resort but they did have skiers. I can remember
skiing there during that period and I would say on the weekends there
were at least 2-3000 people on the mountain and I would guess at least
1000 during the week. OK, your asking why am I telling you this? Well,
Carl saw the mountain slope and decided to see if the URQ could conquer
it!!  B.S. you say?  I would say the same thing but I saw pictures today
proving it true and there are skiers on the mountain to boot. He was
escorted off the mountain by the Breckenridge police; but he said they
were just laughing at/with him. Today, he would be put in jail for that
antic. He says he has the negatives of all these amazing Audi/Porsche
pictures he showed me today. As soon as I get them I will post for your
enjoyment if you would like.

Regards,

Peter Coulter
obsessive URQ collector _______________________________________________
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