A lot has happened since my last update yet not much progress has been made on the project ... c'est la vie.

There are several reasons for this but the primary one is that I decided to swap the V8 into my other Ur-Q -- a Tornado Red '85 in much better than average condition -- instead of finishing up the job with the '83 that I bought with the engine.

Try as I might, I've yet to warm up to the color black on these cars ... I'm aware that the car's designer thought the body looked best in dark black and I know all Ferdinand Piech's personal Ur-Qs were painted black but here in the desert southwest where I live, it's about the most impractical color  there is.   It absorbs heat (which isn't too good for a car without a/c!), it readily shows even the most minute amount of dirt and dust, not to mention swirl marks and other paint blemishes, and it looks far too serious and somber for what's supposed to be a weekend "fun" car.

Sure, I could always paint it another color -- figure $3,000 or so for a proper bare-metal job -- but then there's also the "condition" factor to consider.  As the photos show, the body itself is far from perfect and initial estimates for repairing/replacing the engine mounting rail, inner fender panel, etc. are in the range of $650-800 plus parts.  Alas, that extra four-grand would put me waayyy over budget and I don't want to even think about how Paula would react to that news...

(Mind you, I knew that the car was not perfect before I bought it -- the previous owner had described it to me carefully -- but I wasn't listening because I really -- I mean really -- wanted it regardless.   Besides, at the price, I assumed I could always part it out without losing too much money on the deal if it later proved that I was in over my head.)

And even once I got past the personal taste and financial issues, there was the fact that my '85 is still apart after two years and I'd still have to put it back together after I finished up with swapping the engine into the '83 ... however, by swapping the engine into it instead, I'd only have to work on one car and not two.  (I know this is supposed to be fun and not a chore but now that I'm a "family man," my time isn't always my own).  Consider also that I've got garage space for only two cars and driveway space for two more, and it's clear that one of them -- the '83 or the '85 -- would eventually have to go and the decision to switch gears became easier.

That's easier, not easy ... given that Audi only imported 73 '85 Ur-Qs and that the vast majority of them have been modified and/or irreversibly tinkered with, I was determined to keep mine in stock condition.   Although I was technically the third owner, I bought it from the daughter of the original owner and both her and her father had always had the car serviced by Audi dealers.  It was stock through-and-through, as the parts prices listed on the stack of repair invoices that came with it verified.  When these cars became collector's items in a few years, I was going to be ready to cash-in with mine.

Or so I thought, anyway.   This year, I was invited to a pre-auction tour of the Barrett-Jackson collector car auction (it's held a mere five miles from my house) and I took advantage of the opportunity to poll  various collector-car hot-shots about what they think the future holds for the Ur-Q from a collector's point of view.  To a man, the answer was not much .. at least not for another decade or two, if then. The one person who had more than a passing knowledge of the car explained that the serious collectors would go for a Sport Quattro instead -- Audi only manufactured 214 of them and rumor has it that less than a dozen have found their way into the U.S. -- or possibly the '90 or '91 20-valve Ur-Qs, which perform much better and were also never imported to the U.S.  He thought it was unlikely that anybody'd ever lay out big-bucks for a watered-down U.S.-spec car -- even a rare one -- especially when it's likely that the DOT and EPA importation rules will be relaxed even further with the passage of time.

Well, that was really the final straw for me.  Barring a dramatic financial reversal, it's unlikely I'd ever sell the car no matter what it's worth and even if they double or triple in value over the next 20 years, we're still talking only $35-40,000.  In the grand scheme, that isn't all that much money and keeping the car stock only so my heirs can get a better price for it after I'm dead doesn't make much sense.  Better to maximize my enjoyment, tinker with it in a respectful manner -- installing the V8 engine that Audi would no doubt have installed themselves had the car remained in production seems respectful enough to me -- and let my heirs sell it for whatever they can get for it than to turn it into a garage queen.

Let's face facts: Why would I ever drive a stock Ur-Q when there's a V8-powered one parked alongside it in the garage?  And if I am not going to drive both cars regularly and neither of them is likely to provide me with a windfall in my dotage, then why should I go to the trouble and expense of keeping two cars when only one would do?  From here, the decision to part-out the '83 and swap the V8 into the '85 was the only logical conclusion.

To that end, I've started auctioning off some of the spares I have and parts that came with it on eBay -- check out my auction list, if you're interested -- and so far, it's been pretty successful.  It appears I've even got a buyer for the stripped shell once I've sold all the parts off it -- he's building an Ur-Q for ProRally use and would love to have a spare bodyshell, just in case -- and the extra money I'll raise by selling off my unneeded and unwanted parts can be redirected toward finishing the landscaping, which will definitely bring a smile to Paula's face.