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Quite suddenly, Audi pulled out of world endurance racing last year. This was sad for a number of reasons. They were essentially the team to beat at Le Mans for more than a decade. A number of clever people, as well as me, wondered where all the engineering talent and go fast goodies were going to end up.
Now we know: say hello to the Audi Sport brand.
Ongoing Fallout
The sadly sordid background of how this windfall of street performance goodies appeared in the first place is well known, but not really talked about. Audi is a division of Volkswagen. And a little while back, VW got caught with their hand in the cookie jar-oh who am I kidding" VW got caught blatantly cheating like a Nixon White House aide on the emissions from their diesel engines. VW got hit hard by a huge fine and was also forced to buy back all of the offending diesel cars, and replace them or refund the customer’s money. VW’s commercial viability was suddenly as shaky as a brick house in San Francisco.
To arrest this nearly out of control fall before it resulted in a smoking crater on the desert floor, the non-indicted/fired/retired members of the VW board stood on the monetary brakes with both feet. New VW microbus" Gone. VW involvement in the World Rally Championship" Over. New up-market push" None for VW, thank you very much, leave that to our other brands. Kicking butt and taking names at Le Mans" Auf Wiederse...