The S4 Authority

Do you get a discount for ED like with BMW?

DarthRay

Yes, usually 5% off MSRP (3% for the A3) but as you'll find in these forums, the final price is determined by the dealer and it is absolutely negotiable.

DarthRay

Got word from my SA earlier this week. It appears that the "Welcome Kits" are still being finalized and are supposed to be shipped starting next week. I'll keep checking that mailbox every day...

bandersen

Any paperwork yet?

DarthRay

As of yesterday, nothing yet. I'm still expecting a delivery between the end of the week (6/17) and the end of next week (6/24). I'll keep you posted.

richrov

There is good news and bad about driving in Germany. The good news; The roads are better than ours. The drivers are MUCH better. It is easy to go from city to city. Do NOT just depend on a GPS. Definitely bring an atlas. The Michelin Atlas is great and a German phrase book would also be helpful. In spite of what you read here, most Germans you meet do NOT speak English. University graduates do, but every day Germans don't.

The bad news? GAS COSTS $ 9.00/gallon!!!!

I dropped off my car at the Munich airport drop off on Monday, May 30. Seventeen days later, June 16, it was in Davisville, Rhode Island....where it has been sitting for almost a week.

My friends are betting the hard working government "workers" of the Customs and Border Patrol will sit on the car for longer than it took to cross Germany, be loaded on a boat and sailed across the Atlantic.

Maybe I should drop off a box of donuts to motivate them to do the job they are being paid to do....

DarthRay

Thanks for the extra info, richrov. In attempt to calm me down a bit more, my SA has prepared a full script of what's supposed to happen and when. From that e-mail I got from her, it seems like my car will be sitting on the port awaiting for customs to clear it for about a month. :-(

I also had heard of the $9/gallon. I was trying to prepare myself thinking $7/gal would be a good number. Man, $9/gallon! I plan on driving upwards of 1,000 miles. If the car returns me, say, 18mpg, we're talking ~56 gallons of gas x $9 ~= $500 of gas cost. Ouch! :-(

BTW, no welcome kit yet. Still hopefull it will come this week.

richrov

The "welcome Kit" isn't much, a nice folio with some letters. Since you have your file#, you are good to go.

If you are doing an overnight flight, I strongly suggest spending the first night in a hotel before picking up your car. I don't sleep well on airplanes, so jet lag and overall tiredness made my drive to Lake Constance an adventure.

I put almost 1,500 miles on the car and even with $ 9.00 gas, it was worth it. The 2 laps at Nuerburgring were a plus!

I suggest getting a book called, "A Car Lovers Guide to Germany". I used it a lot. Went to the Motodrom Hotel at the Hockenheimring for brunch, stayed at the Hotel am Tiergarten in Nuerburg, etc. The hotel is owned by Mrs. Schmitz, mother of the famous Sabine Schmitz. Of course the Ring is under threat from the Socialist/Green government of Rhineland/Palatinate. Go there while you can.

Also, the airport hotel at Munich Airport, the Kempinski, is really, really nice!

We flew U S Air. One of our flight attendants weighed 250 lbs and had a mustache...It was great to see Lufthansa keeping the old standards for flight attendant appearance!

We were picked up by Audi in an A8L W12. I asked why we were driving so slow on the Autobahn. Our driver said he drove that way to not scare Americans...I asked him to drive faster...which he did...200 kph.

Miriam Kufner, the Audi specialist is very helpful and full of advice.

She told us to purchase a tax stamp to drive in Austria, without her advice we wouldn't have known. Also, gas is MUCH cheaper in Austria, only $ 8.00/gallon!, but they have speed limits...

There is a very nice Croatian restaurant in Obergau...I had no idea there was such a thing as Croatian food.

DarthRay

Good stuff, richrov!

Yep, will definitely sleep over once before picking up the car. We were thinking about getting there in the morning, go spend the day in Munich and come back to the Kempinski for the night.

Given what you said about US Air, I'm glad we ruled it out up front. We're looking into Delta and/or KLM right now for just a few $$ more.

I had heard about the stamp thing for Austria -- and we're planning to stop by a couple of cities there so that's another welcome tip.

Is this the book you are talking about?

http://www.amazon.com/Corsa-Lovers-G.../dp/0982571011

All good tips. Please keep them coming!

Thanks!

richrov

Yes, it is. Great book for car lovers. Also has a few flying places of interest.

Really recommend the Dornier Museum at Friedrichshafen airport and the Zeppelin Museum in town. Plan on spending a day at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

Nice hotels: Schloss Hotel Waserburg, The BMW hotel in Ammerwald, http://www.ammerwald.at/, Hotel am Tiergarten in Nuerburg.

Plan on spending the whole day at the Audi Forum and definitely take the factory tour. Watching rolls of steel go in one end of the building and cars being driven out the other is amazing.

If you will be touring Munich, do it before you pick up car. The S-Bahn works so well, you would have to be nuts to try to drive around the city.

Also, take the S-Bahn to Dachau. The fact that evil place is a stop on the street car is a complete shock. Germany is a modern western country with people and institutions like us and yet, just 70 years ago, they industrialized murder and killed people just the way they build cars. People went in one end and corpses came out the other.