Audi 5000 and the "unintended acceleration" issue

[gangajas]

What happened to this car in the USA is incredible ops: :roll:

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=3585

[ZfrkS62]

60 minutes also ended up taking it on the chin a few years later though when they ran a piece on the side mounted gas tanks in the Chevy pickup trucks exploding in a T-bone collision.

The problem was, whoever was in charge of the pyrotechnic device that they had rigged up, triggered it a hair too early and if you watched carefully, you could see it detonate before the truck was struck.

Chevy sued. One anchor resigned, but never apologized and a retraction was never made.

Audi fucked up when they took the middle road on that one though. It's taken them all that time to get their image back in the US. And it still isn't what it was back then.

[Mattk]

Who the fuck brakes using the left foot? Stupid women.

[gangajas]

Originally Posted by Mattk Who the fuck brakes using the left foot?

Rally drivers and some soccer moms.

[Mattk]

Well, I was talking about non-racing situations! The closest I get to left-foot braking is those SEGA rally games in video arcades. I tried it once after a beer and really fucked it up! Maybe these housewives have greater dreams.

[sentra_dude]

Fucking retards.

[silentm]

stupid auto drivers. the whole world should be driving stick shifts...

[philip]

The Audi 5000 was a really revolutionary car for most Americans. It was fast powerful and the styling was completely different than American cars. It became the status symbol for uban upper middleclass very quickly. The husbands purchased the car but It was the women who generally drove it. They were ill prepared to drive such a high performance car with an automatic transmission.

My understanding was the pedals were a diffenent spacing than the lumbering American sedans they were used to driving.

The accidents were very tragic ususally involving the mother pushing her small child at the front of the car though the garage door and out the back of the garage.

The American car magazines at the time, poo pooed the claims that it was the cars fault. Showing quite easily that the engine could not overcome the brakes.

Audis, sales plummeted.

However, many Audi owners that ignored the false claims noticed that their cars were not entirely reliable and their repair costs were skyhigh. That is what killed Audi in the US for sometime. Not the unintended acceleration claims.

Then unintended acceleration problem was partially solved when the brake pedal had to be depressed in order to shift the car out of park, due to these claims against Audi.

Every couple of months usually an elderly person drives their car into a store here in Houston. I'm sure they claim the devil took over the car, but we know what it was.