Or ‘bewunderswert durchschnittlich’ in German, if you prefer. Keith is bowled over by how delightfully ordinary his Audi is
1992 AUDI 100 2.6E AVANT
Life has been quiet for my Audi 100 as we head towards the year’s end. I thought it was going to be stationary too, because it had deadlocked itself – fuel flap included – at an event 30 miles away from the office. And that was before my need to drag it home from there, 185 miles away.
Luckily, the driver’s door key opened that door manually, which meant that I could at least get in and drive it – and worry about the fuel gauge, which was on the orange warning sector, at some point in the future.
Once back at the office, I wondered how I should go about attacking the inoperative central locking system. The good news was that the key unlocked the boot, giving me access to the pump for the central locking. Before diving in, I decided on a quick audit, which revealed that all doors aside from the driver’s one were deadlocked, together with the fuel flap.
Pushing the button inside the car did nothing, leaving me with the only other option of manually powering up the power locking pump with a battery pack. That would involve a fair bit of disassembly; so before that, I tried a quick Google in the (likely vain) hope that there might be a solution.
One ancient forum post suggested that pressing and holding the door unlock button may be enough to kick the lazy central locking into life. Knowing that it wouldn’t work, I did just that. And guess what? The locks wearily disengaged after 15 seconds or so. Quick – fill it up and drive it back home!
On that journey, the intermittent bulb and brake warnings continued to nag me but I knew that they were relatively minor issues; the bulb warning was for one numberplate light (and only in bends!) and the brake warning was also electrical because the discs, pads and fluid were all fine and braking power was as it should have been. Tuning out the insistent ‘beeeep’ I relaxed and allowed the miles to pass by effortlessly. In silence, too, because the original Blaupunkt stereo was as good as d
