Audi A8 - Page 2

I'm talking about the everyday "dependable" car. Not the cars I might use for enjoyment ... the ones that work particularly well with the hard-sided Hermes leather luggage in English tan.

One day I will be baller enough to have cars that act as accessories to my luggage.

Have you ever been in a A8? It's not exaclty your housekeeper's Audi.

I say that recalling a conversation with a Maybach driver in Hong Kong. I commented that I didn't feel the need to drive a Maybach given what Mercedes offers. He responded, "This is Hong, Kong. The gardner drive Mercedes."

When the luggage is by Hermes ... that is the way it works.

The A8 comes with Hermes luggage? If I lease an A8, do I get to keep the Hermes when I return the car at end of lease?

No, no ... the Morgan comes as an accessory -- albeit a costly one -- to the Hermes luggage.

Well, firstly I wasn't taking a pop at the brand, just the model. I have driven an A8 as it happens, it was a few years ago mind. It just not a car that I think fits the image of RSS. It's comfortable, refined and well buit for sure, but it is also bland like a lot of large German cars. I can not picture, in my minds eye, RSS slipping out of the front seat of an A8 wearing a Huntsman House check Tweed Jacket, now out of a Morgan-ish type car, or a Jaguar XJ in a rich jewel colour, leather seats and burr walnut dash. That I can picture.

The A8 is great, but isn't it almost so understated that when someone sees it you look like a douchebag for trying to look understated in a $100k car?

Sometimes that bland German car can be quite useful. I recall a time when my mechanic put it this way: "Given the seven vintage cars you now own, I can almost promise you'll have a car to drive on a daily basis." But, yes, I do prefer the style of a "Morgan-ish" sytle car.

Now George, I hope you don't take this attitude when it comes to airplanes. I really don't want to trade in my current one for a Lockheed Electra Model 10E.

Well, planes are a completely different kettle of fish, besides the obvious. With cars, there is a distinct styling component to them. Planes are products that are driven by purely engineering concerns.

I was not aware that Juan Trippe was an engineering concern.

Pan Am...? What I mean is that [modern] planes aren't designed to look pretty, even though they may have a certain beauty, this beauty is derived from engineering concerns not aesthetic ones.

Yes.

Not completely true. For example, the upper deck on the 747 was Juan's idea. It did not originate with Boeing or the engineers. Then again, I've never thought of the upper deck of the 747 as particularly beautiful ... but it is a significant part of the design.

But in all sincerity, beauty is often very much one of the first concerns of the companies that build planes. Given that my family is associated with the founding of a company that keeps a significant percentage of today's aircraft aloft ... I know this for a fact.

Well, when I worked in aerospace I never saw any intentional aesthetic component to plane design, in the 'golden age', maybe.. I think the very shape of aircraft lends them a beauty. Also, bear in mind I'm talking about the outside of the aircraft, not the interior.

I agree that it is less true today that it was in the past.

I agree.

I assumed we were.