Follow Us

Audi Club of Florida (ACNA)

ACFL FB Group

Audi Club of Florida (new website)

Contact Information

Events

Videos

  • Add Videos
  • View All

Forum

A6/S6 Roof Racks for sale (2005-2011)

I recently upgraded my 2007 A6 to a 2014 3.0.  I have a factory set of roof racks I used just a few time to carry my kayak.  They are like new and attach solidly to the roof using out-of-sight holes…Continue

Tags: rack, roof, factory

Started by John Trainer Apr 27, 2018.

Audi Club at Daytona International Speedway 2 Replies

Do someone from Miami area plan to attend to the event at Daytona? I would like information about round-trip auto transport to the racetrack. Thank you. Continue

Started by ALBERTO PORTALATIN. Last reply by ALBERTO PORTALATIN Nov 2, 2016.

New Audi

I am new to this club/forum. Just recently purchased a 2009 TT Roadster and just love it. Already thinking of adding a new version to the family. Question to you all is I see there is a possible 6%…Continue

Started by Andre Forand Oct 28, 2016.

iPhone App Badge

Somewhere Beyond the Sea

The date is now set for our drive to the Conch Republic and that will be Saturday September 22nd.  
The start of this great adventure will be at ABT Sportsline on 16560 NW 10th avenue, Miami, FL 33169, time and additional details to follow.
We will then proceed to Key West.
A limited number of rooms have been set aside for the club at the Marriott Key West Beachside. You will need to arrange your own reservations in order to receive the ACFL discount rate for the evening of the 22nd. They will go fast so make those reservations early.
On Saturday evening all will gather for a dinner in a separate room at the hotel that has also been reserved for us. Additional details will be coming out soon under separate cover.
As some will be coming as far as Jacksonville and there will be a long drive home Sunday, we are looking at having a very early morning photo op for those who wish to join us at the southernmost point of the contiguous 48, similar the photo at the top of this newsletter of the trip we made a number of years ago.

Light and Design

Last month there was a short article regarding light, headlamps, Audis, their design and the architecture of light.. Here is a link with some additional interesting discussion on that subject.  http://media.audiusa.com/audi-soul/37

 

 

Is the Bloom off the Rose?

Once again Audi turned in year to year sales increases for the month of April, of 2.1%. Not necessarily a stellar performance but still a positive one as they have continued record runs for years now.  
The really interesting statistic and news though not reported unless one digs, follows this stuff and compares the numbers with the competition is that for the first time in a very long time the other boys from Bavaria, BMW, had turned in a 3.8% increase.
BMW has consistently sold more cars than Audi but not increased their monthly percentage sales increase, which has meant that Audi was slowly gaining until last month. Now a month’s performance, often driven by marketing and sales decisions is certainly not a trend but is it the turning of a corner?
By the time you are reading this we may know how May has turned out and hopefully that was just a glitch and operational failure on the part of a few who have received their appropriate MBAs by now, Management By Acupuncture from upper level management.

Having spent more than just a couple of years in the employ of a very German multinational company, it is difficult to determine where both short and long term marketing decisions for a specific country are sometimes actually made.  
That company wanted to rent a blimp, there are no longer any dirigibles, make a cross country flight as part of a roll out of a new product, and have it land in New Jersey near their US headquarters.
Now with the company logo on its vertical tail fins and a landing not all that far from Lakehurst, the parallels of the Hindenburg’s last flight were there even discounting the fact that it would be filled with helium not explosive hydrogen and the company logo was blue on white not the national colors of black on a white circle with a red background. Someone must have used a hot line to Waldorf Germany and said that would not have been the greatest of marketing ideas.

Meanwhile back at Audi, now that some of the higher ups are coming under the scrutiny of the law and are either spending time pounding stones as a ward’s of the Federal Government or facing the possibility of doing so like Winterkorn due to their complicity and involvement in the Ab-Gas Affair, perhaps people who have not been bought off with the more than generous buy outs for their diesels are thinking twice about the brand? Who knows? Is there an untapped environmental social consciousness out there taking a toll on sales?  
I really doubt that and do not know of anyone who refused the terms of settlement and I think on Audi’s part their terms of subsequent endearment for their diesel were particularly generous.
All took the money and or car and in some cases both, ran, loved it and never looked back.  
Of course they bought that Audi for that half gallon extra MPG and would have purchased a MB or BMW otherwise. Please give me a break. No one except in the US received anything for that entire debacle, oh and of course the fines to the US Government.
So why is there this falter in sales percentages to BMW for the month of April? Dealership General Managers and Regional AoA District Managers, who live in a world often not much different from Willie Loman in “Death of a Salesman” as they are after all responsible for the sales of their dealership and districts or region on a monthly basis and need to answer for short falls in execution certainly play a high stakes game .  
There is clearly enough product and variation except Avants and diesels (but they don’t sell for Audi and do for MB and BMW) are geniuses when all goes well but it is another matter when the wheels start falling off and plans let alone reach numbers, they may use a different term are not achieved.
Think about it, they are now moving more vehicles in a month than they did back in the early 90’s when it took them an entire year to move around 12,000 Audis.
What geniuses all of them are today or are there a few other factors at play here?
I would say it relates not so much to the cars, then and now. The cars were advanced then compared to the competition and that really started in 1984 with the first wind cheating 5000 and then the introduction of
quattro. Then the failure was more related to the hysteria surrounding a very false news story out of 60 Minutes and a fickle public that believed it when it turned out it was driver peddle misapplication and that MB actually had more sudden accelerations than Audi according to the final report from the DoT.

Audi has always been the other chair at the table ever since, sort of like the car and to use the phrase that Packard had in the 20’s when it was  one of the gold standards of the automotive world. “Ask the man who drives one” (could not get away with that nowadays). Has Audi become so mainstream, common, though still desirable that the demand is falling off a bit even prior to eclipsing BMW in actual monthly sales numbers? I do not know but one thing for sure, and this is my opinion only, it is not the “geniuses” in marketing and sales that rebuilt the brand. It was the engineers, designers who built a car and then some very brave men and women who raced them that once again put the marque on the map during some very dark marketing times in this country.  
Audis have always been engineering and design statements that actually worked and performed as intended but often exceeded.
The old ones still look very good as they become classics and not dated. Interestingly enough now Audis have morphed into becoming fashion statements, which is a very fickle and quixotic field to play on. But it is one the marketers and sales folks frolic in as they tip their wine glasses at highbrow social events with all of the “beautiful people” often attend that in reality and in many cases do not even buy Audis or know much about them other than being comped tickets or having received invitations to events.  
They just create that “look” and probably by next morning add ultimately about as much value as “last night’s ice water”.
In the interim the rest of us who paid for that event by driving Audis and missed the invitation, got to read about it in the latest news bulletin regarding the roll out of a new car and hopefully rush out to buy it and perhaps bump up May’s sales figures.

First Coast Region News and Notes

Audi Club of North America 2018 Car Raffle

Make sure to check out the latest issue of the QQ for additional information regarding this year’s raffle. There will be two cars, a 2019 S5 Premium Plus Sportback and a 2019 RS3. 5,000 tickets will be sold for each car at $25 per tickets. If you wish to purchase a chance to win one of these cars, make sure you contact Gerry Simms at gsimms_2000@msn.com. ACFL gets a cut of the raffle ticket proceeds each year to go towards dedicated ACFL events such as the Octoberfest and Key West drives coming up if you purchase from me or Bob Greving.  

From the ACNA monthly conference call:

2018 ACNA National Event Information: Your best source is the latest Quattro Quarterly pages 58 and 59. It details the the schedule of events. I have extra copies if you need one. Details are also available on the ACNA website PacNorWest Audi Club Chapter Page, search Nationals, I tried the link in the Audi Unfair Advantage newsletter, and it took me to the new A6.

ACNA Website:

It is undergoing changes to make it more social media friendly. Changes are in initial phases, so changes are coming to the content to bridge the gap between platforms.  I

ACFL has two events coming up.

September:

There is an event being planned starting at ABT Sportsline in Miami carravaning all the way to the conch replublic, going to Key West. More information to follow.

September:

There is a Octoberfest event happening at Crown Audi Clearwater to Audi Gainesville Saturday September 29th. A band is being flown in from Munich, Germany. This will be a Ronald MacDonald charity event. More information as it comes available.

AUDIJAX Meeting:

I met with Stephan Gronberg the General Manager:

We both agree we would like the dealer more involved with us and us with them. He knows most of us who are active with JaxRings. We have agreed to meet Monthly in person.

Things we discussed:

If you take some nice pictures of one of our events/luncheons, please e-mail them to  sgronberg@audijax.com. He would like to have some some new local content rather than the dealer pics and national stock to display. He will mention us for the credit and link to us so people can join up. He gets about 4000 hits on his Facebook articles per month.

Audi Club Luncheons:

He would like us to try to vary the luncheon locations to the west side/Orange Park also. We will soon have two Audi Dealerships, and he would like the opportunity to have dealer representation from one of the dealerships to show they do value us at the luncheons. Please scout out and give me some locations that are good.

Audi Grand Opening:

1. Stephan may have some opportunities for people to be a part of the event, such as putting together gift bags, and various assistance needed. These would be volunteer services, but I am sure there would be some fringe benefit involved. He is still trying to nail down the date.

2. Private Behind the Scenes Tour:

Sometime Stephan would like to put host an exclusive tour before the place opens for us to visit the new dealership. He says this is going to be like nothing we have ever seen before. He says this is going to be a place where people actually want to come get their car worked on. I need to know how many would be interested.

Audi A7:

If you are interested in an A7 there is an additional incentive of $5000 to purchase one right now, that is pretty hefty on top of the additional ACNA 6% discount.

AudiJax Special for us:

Stephan is going to provide us a monthly newsletter special. Junes will be:

10% off any APR Tunes or parts.

News from the desk of the ACFL President 

Recently I was fortunate enough to have had lunch with one of our longest standing members of the ACFL who now has a position with AoA, Pierre Uteschill, We were both members of the Florida chapter of the ACNA when Sebring was the stellar club event of the year and there was a nucleus of members in Orlando and Tampa Bay and the club was populated with Thursday night 4 wheeled café racers. I had an Ur S6 and S6 Avant at the time. As for Sebring, it was also very different then, the beer was kept ice cold in galvanized cow watering troughs, old couches were used for seating, the latrines were haz-mat zones, Sebring had a Lake Porsche corral when it rained and Audis were known to have spun out during parade laps. Things have changed a lot and certainly toned down in the last 16 years.


One of the items discussed at that luncheon was that over the years and on a fairly regular basis, folks from AoA and Audi AG, used to provide the chapter with State of the Business reports at the now shuttered Audi Technical Center in Clearwater. All of these almost annual meets were very well attended as ACFL members were afforded an inside look into the inner workings of Audi. There was one memorable meet when a scheduled speaker had to be reminded by phone as the rest of us sheltered in our cars or under an overhang from some serious T-storms outside the tech center. No harm no foul though, the presentation was well worth the dampened wait, in addition, all got to choose Audi Polo shirts of their choice for their extra wait and had a good laugh about the entire incident. Those who were lucky enough to have attended those meets will remember gentlemen such as Ian Bolin, Andreas Baensch, and Scott Berkebile et al. gave numerous presentations to the faithful that provided insights into not just the workings but Audi “THINK” (my term there), that were both enlightening and informative and why Audi in many ways is a different car company. Club members actually drove from as far as Naples, Jacksonville and West Palm Beach to attend these early Saturday morning events. Many also attended from Orlando, which was considered just a hop skip and a jump for those gatherings. They simply were just that good. Well Pierre has agreed to take the time and start these again. We are looking at having it probably during a week day evening when he is in St Petersburg visiting the Audi Point in Clearwater and will try to coordinate it with the roll out of the new A6. Possibly all could reconnoiter at Audi Clearwater to have a chance to spend some time with the A6 then head out for supper. This should be a treat as we will get a first-hand look at the car including its stunning dash prior to its official arrival at the dealerships. Many will recall that we had similar opportunities at the Audi Technical Center with new vehicles but there for obvious reasons, photos were verboten. All of this is contingent on his schedule and the arrival of the new A6. In addition, there is the possibility of similar events being held at other Audi Points that are in Pierre’s area. On behalf of the chapter, thank you Pierre for stepping up to the plate as we start these great events again.

 

Views: 150

Comment

You need to be a member of Audi Club of Florida to add comments!

Join Audi Club of Florida

© 2024   Created by Audi Club.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service