Hi there! Welcome to the Optional Extra video for the
Audi Coupé video. If you haven't seen the Audi Coupé video, there's a link above and
it's probably better if you see it in that order else this will just be confusing!
So first of all I'd like to say that the Audi Coupé - one of the reasons why I decided
to do this video was I just didn't really understand it as a child, and I hadn't really
focused on it since then, and I just saw this car. It had a "C" on the back of it and it was just
quite confusing. I see some websites that say "Oh the Audi 80 and Coupé were meant to be very
close". I didn't see the connection at all. But Audi tried to distance the Coupé from the 80,
which made sense, by using things like the twin headlights that they put on the front,
which was also used in the US for the Audi 4000, which was the Audi 80 just rebranded.
At that time my father had Audi 100s. He managed to get himself an Audi 200 Turbo - which was
the coolest car ever! So I was aware of Audi 100s and 200s, but I wasn't really focused
on the 80 and certainly not the Coupé. I didn't really see - and to be honest I wasn't going down
to car dealerships every five minutes. I couldn't even drive! So I just wanted to find out
exactly what was going on. I mean I saw the Quattro. I knew about the Quattro. But those
were rare as... rare as hen teeth. Whatever the phrase is! They were incredibly rare and I certainly
didn't see one on the road. So anyway that's part of the reason why I started to look into this.
Looking at the Audi 100 Coupé S, the first Coupé that Audi created back in 1969. I presume it
was the first one. The failure of the Audi 100 Coupé S could have been because it had a pretty
high price. So when it came to the Audi Coupé in 1980 Audi obviously wanted it to be cheaper,
and so have a better chance of success. So they based it on the entry-level model 80 rather than
the more expensive 100. The Audi 100 - they did have the Avant model, but I don't really classify
that as a Coupé because it was essentially just a hatchback version of the 100. Anyway the Coupé
had the cachet of the Audi 100's five-cylinder engine which was in 1980 still a pretty big deal.
I think it had first come out in 1976 - around then - on the Audi 100, and they were touting
it for all it was worth saying it's better than a V6 and better than the four-cylinder.
They tried to make the Audi Coupé cheaper but it cost more than all Audi 80s and even some of the
Audi 100s, so it still wasn't a relatively cheap car. But I guess the market came to them and it
hit the sweet spot, and I think probably also the fact that it had that Audi Quattro cache to it
people essentially were more drawn to it and it became as as we saw relatively popular.
The sunroof - I didn't really talk anything about the sunroof but
it popped up. It had sort of a little back pop-up thing so you could... which I find it the most
useless thing on a sunroof ever! They say "Oh it adds a bit of air to the cabin" but it doesn't add
any air to the cabin! You might as well just crack a window or something like that. It's completely
useless! Anyway so it only popped up at the back. It didn't actually slide back at all. It didn't
completely open as that would have limited the rear headroom, and they were trying to focus on
the fact that it was a 2+3 as they said. So anyway I'm sure in my mind I would have thought the
that would have been a completely useless thing to add to a car, because the whole pop-up thing
in my mind not particularly useful! It also didn't have a folding rear
seat. Obviously it wasn't a hatchback but the rear seat wouldn't fold either, so it was a
limited practicality as far as a car. It really was just essentially a saloon car.
So obviously the Audi Coupé, they focused pretty heavily on
fuel economy and in the 1970s obviously we had the 1973 fuel shock - the fuel crisis
so a lot of cars were focusing on the whole fuel efficiency thing. But of course in 1979
even more so with Iran and problems like that, there was a second fuel shock at that time.
But Audi saw that particularly with their five-cylinder engine and some
of their smarts that they had around engines they could have a competitive advantage over
arch rivals BMW and Mercedes who were starting to try and compete with. So the Audi Coupé's
engine had a high compression ratio of 10:1, which was pretty high at the time. They also
focused on low revs when idling it had a "Digital Idle Speed Stabilisation" system
which of course doesn't help the official figures but on the overall fuel efficiency of the car
obviously helps it out. And then of course it didn't have a five-speed gearbox, they had a
4+E gearbox, so basically the 5th gear was a was a cruiser. And of course it had the Econometer
with that annoying little light that popped up to change gear, which you know
can be annoying. To be honest I had that on my VW Golf. It wouldn't put a light on but it would
put a little thing showing what the suggested gear would be. And I thought it was fine for that, but
I could see how the Econometer might be a little bit frustrating. They also had it in
the 1980s on the Polo and the Volkswagen Polo, and I'm sure they had on other cars as well,
but obviously quickly they realised that people were looking to the Coupé
for performance particularly with the light of the Audi Quattro, and people just didn't really
connect this car with fuel economy at all. People didn't care about the fuel economy at that point.
Also briefly in the video I talked about the Audi 80 and the Audi 90. Again before this video
I didn't quite understand what the Audi 90 was. I figured they'd maybe lengthened the Audi 80,
and they were trying to make something in between the 80 and the 100. But it wasn't
that at all. The Audi 90 was essentially just an Audi 80 with higher spec and a larger engine,
so it was just a different model variant of the Audi 80 and obviously it didn't seem to work very
well because they dropped the Audi 90 name after a while anyway. And the 1984 Audi Coupé Quattro
was basically an Audi 90 Quattro because it was a higher spec level with a Coupé
body. So essentially they didn't do a lot of work they just essentially
moved the bits over from the Audi 90 Quattro, and just move them in.
The Audi Coupé Quattro has one really cool party piece which I didn't mention in the video, which
a lot of the Quattros had in the 80s. I'm not sure if they do that now but the rear defroster
has "Quattro" written into the heating element. So of course when you're defrosting the window
you get a cool pattern on the car. So you can see anyway I think that looks cool. So it's a
fun thing and to be honest we need more fun things in cars. I think we need more frivolity in life.
So the second generation Audi Coupé was designed by a guy called J Mays, and yes
that is his real name! It's not his first initial. His first real name is J, just the letter J.
I'm sure he had a lot of time trying to explain that as a child and growing up,
but he's named after his grandfather who was S J Mays. Again I don't know what they were thinking
when they did that, and they thought "Oh it was a good idea. Oh yeah the grandfather really liked
the fact that his name was just one initial. I'm sure that the grandson will love this!"
Anyway so that's his real name. He worked for Volkswagen doing the Beetle as I mentioned and
then he moved to Ford... did a whole load of stuff for Ford for many many years, and now works for
Whirlpool for whatever reason. So I'm sure he's having great times doing stuff there.
Anyway so the Coupé. I thought that talking about sales of the Coupés particularly in
the 70s and 80s when I did the video on the Ford Capri my understanding was
Coupés were fading out in the 1980s, because Ford were trying to sell the
Capri and it just wasn't selling at all. And of course everyone was going to hot hatches
but apparently not so in Germany. Apparently in Germany it might have been fading out in
the rest of Europe but it's still in Germany Coupés was still kind of a thing. 8% of all
cars in the 1980s in Germany were Coupés. So still a fair amount, a fair sized market.
Obviously Audi really hit the sweet spot with a 1980 Coupé and that's the reason why in 1988 they
saw a big future growth for Coupés. So by 1988 they were making it a completely separate design
and things like that. And so you can see that in BMW also making a Coupé. And it
seems that the market instead of contracting was actually growing and maybe that's why Ford
brought the Probe from the US into Europe in the early 90s because they saw well was maybe
the Calibra was out and they needed something to compete with it, and maybe it wasn't the
fact that the Capri was failing. Maybe they just needed a new design - something new and exciting.
So finally this whole thing was just a big trip down memory lane. I'm sure you've seen videos
that I've produced and they've sparked a whole load of things from your childhood. Well Audi
things and VW things spark all my childhood memories. My dad had an Audi, my mum had a
Volkswagen - various different ones, and so whenever I see the brochures in
that format it always just brings back all the memories, and yeah I really enjoy it.
So anyway that's all I have for now. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video!