Shop Stories: Why I hate Audi’s

It really wasn’t the Audi’s fault, but this is one car that I will never forget.

It must have been around 1980. My dad owned two shops at the time and we installed auto glass and seat covers and other types of trim. I was managing the North Austin shop.

We did a lot of dealer work for the General Motors dealerships in North Austin. We didn’t do much work for the foreign car dealers. One morning, Bob Miller Porsche Audi called and wanted us to do some work for them. We were at the corner of North Lamar and Hwy 183 and they were out 183 close to the MoPac Expressway. I took my shop foreman and picked up the Body Shop Manager at the Pontiac Dealership and went out to Bob Miller Porsche Audi. It was around 3 miles away.

We got to the dealership and there she was. A 1979 Gold Audi 4 door sedan. It had blue leather seat covers. Pretty nice car, except that a fire had started under the dash and burnt the dash and the right door panel. It was also coated with smoke and some ashes inside the car. I told the service writer that we would take the car and clean it up inside, get rid of the smoke smell and replace the right door panel. I told them I wasn’t interested in doing the dash work. They agreed and I sent my shop foreman off in the Audi back to the shop.

I stopped with Glenn the Body Shop Manager and drank a cup of coffee. The day was going great. After drinking the coffee, I was going to take Glenn back to his shop and get on back to mine. As we approached the Olds-Cadillac dealership, I saw Jesse, my shop foreman standing outside the Audi in the middle of Hwy 183. He had slowed down to allow someone to turn into the Olds-Cadillac dealership and a lady in a late model blue Chevrolet rear-ended the Audi. It wasn’t a bad wreck and the Audi could be fixed easy enough, so I wasn’t really worried. I got the phone number of the lady that had caused the wreck and I told her that I would call her when I got an estimate of the damage. I had the Audi towed over to my shop. After we got to the shop, Glenn took some pictures and gave me an estimate.

The shop’s insurance would only pay if we were legally liable for the accident. It was not our fault at all. So the woman’s insurance would have to pay. When you hit a car in the rear end you also cause the rear fenders to bend. I called the lady and at first she was very nice. I then asked her to come to the shop and look at the car. I explained that the rear fenders were bent down a little too, due to the wreck.

It was at that point that things started to go wrong, extremely wrong. She started screaming at me over the phone that she did not dent the rear fenders. I tried to explain the damage and assured her that if she would come and look, she would understand.
That was not to be. She kept screaming at me and hung up the phone. Now what do you do?

In the meantime, I had placed a call to the owner of the Audi, now you get to meet the owner. We’ll call him Mr. J. Just my luck the owner of the Audi was a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. His last station before retiring was the Pentagon. Let me just say at this point that he was a very nice man, he just wasn’t used to someone telling him no.

Mr. J. came over to the shop and looked at the car. He looked at the car and shook his head. The next statement out of his mouth is that he doesn’t want the car anymore. I just looked at him and said that wasn’t my decision. I told him that the lady’s insurance should cover the rear end damage and that I was waiting on confirmation from her insurance company.

Well………. I tried to call the lady again. This time she claims the accident is my fault and she is going to sue me. I tried to reason with her and she just screams and hollers and hangs up on me. I call her insurance company and find out that she didn’t pay her premium and she didn’t have any insurance.

My next call is to Mr. J. I told him that the lady that hit his car didn’t have insurance and my shop insurance wouldn’t cover the damage because we weren’t legally liable for the damage. It would fall back on his insurance. His insurance company was USAA. This company is for military personnel and their families.

Now we have his insurance company involved. The adjuster that worked on the burned dash and door panel came out and looked at the car. He came up with an estimate to give to USAA. Now a year old Audi was worth around $9500 at that time in 1980. The estimate for the rear end damage and the burn damage was around $7000. Now the insurance company had to decide whether to total the car or not.

This process started to run into months with this car just sitting at my location. The adjuster was sure that the car would be fixed and Mr. J. was adamant that he wasn’t going to have that car. Now technically, Mr. J. was my customer. I had to please him. Now the adjuster would come by every couple of weeks and get mad because I wasn’t working on the car. I would call Mr. J. and see if he had heard from his insurance company and tell him the adjuster was pressuring me to repair the car. He said go ahead and fix it, but that he wasn’t going to pay me. So, I just let the car sit there. It sits there in a stall in my shop, the K car in front (which is another story) and the Audi.

I had the car for well over 6 months and probably more like 7 or 8 months when the USAA made their final decision. The reason it took so long was because Mr. J. was a high-ranking retired officer, which had an effect on the time it took them to make a decision. I was told it went all the way up to the CEO of USAA. The final decision was that the damages were the result of two different accidents and they had to be considered individually, so they would not total the car. It had to be fixed.

Mr. J. came over to my shop and sat down with me. He was very nice but explained that the car had to be perfect for him to accept the car. Now sometime in that 6 or 7 months, the Bob Miller Porsche-Audi dealership had closed and we no longer had an Audi dealership in Austin. Now I was the main guy in the deal. Before they closed, I could have taken it back to them (since I originally got it from them) and they would have to deliver it. This fact would come back to haunt me.

Well, I went about getting the car fixed. I had my buddy at the Pontiac Body Shop fix the car. He had a body man that I considered to be one of the best in the business. I requested that he fix the car. Getting parts was a problem though. Remember, we don’t have an Audi dealership in town and they had to order parts through the Bob Miller Volkswagen dealership. Now this was a good parts department for Volkswagen, but they sucked at ordering Audi parts. It took a month or two to get the car back from the body shop because of parts delays. But the car looked perfect when I got it back from the body shop.

Now remember, the dealership was going to do the dash work, but there was no dealership to send the car back to. I finally talked the Bob Miller Volkswagen Dealership into installing the new dash. Again we had parts delays because we had no dash. Another month goes by waiting for this to be done.

I finally get the car back and clean the inside up and repair the door panel. I was sick and tired of this car. By that time, I had told my shop foreman that to give quotes on Audis that were so high that we didn’t work on them. I felt like I was cursed.

We parked the car outside most days and pulled it back in at night. Now remember the blue leather seat covers. Where the sun had shone on these seat covers, they had faded. The blue was not as blue as it had been. These seat covers could have been dyed and been just perfect. No problem…. Mr. J. decided to make the seat covers his make or break spot. He told me in no uncertain terms that he was not going to take delivery of the car unless we put new seat covers on the car. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t my decision. I was losing money on the car no matter how much I charged. It was killing me.

Well………I got a hold of the adjuster and told him about Mr. J’s demands for the seat covers. He got in touch with USAA and in a couple of weeks they came back and asked how much the seat covers would be. I said I would have to get a price from the Volkswagen dealership. I told that adjuster that I would get the price, but that I wasn’t putting out one more dime on that car. If they decided to get the new seat covers, they could pay for them with the order. They finally agreed. Remember, Mr. J. was a valued client of USAA. His high military rank also gave his more pull than most.

I went over to the Volkswagen dealership and told them that I wanted a price for blue leather seats covers for this Audi. Remember that I told you that they sucked at ordering Audi parts. Well, I was there for an hour before this parts guy finally gave me a price. I remember the price being around $1700. They also told me that they couldn’t give me a date as to when the seat covers would be delivered. It might take 6 months or more, because they had to come from the factory in Germany. I took all the info with me and called the adjuster.

He got with USAA and it took another couple of weeks for them to decide to order the seat covers. The adjuster called and wanted them ordered. I reminded him that I was just going to order the seat covers, that they would have to pay for them. I called Mr. J. and told him they were going to order the new seat covers.

Now for the nightmare. When I went back to the Volkswagen dealership, I tried to order the seat covers. I had all the parts numbers with me. I remember it clearly, the little parts guy looked up and me and told me he had made a mistake. Oh, Lord, what now? He said the price he gave me was for leather inserts in the seats and vinyl boxing. I told him, that I had requested all leather seat covers. He apologized and shook his head. All leather seats covers would cost $3400, twice the original price I had given the adjuster. Again they told me they could not guarantee delivery. They would call me when they came in, but to expect 6 to 12 month waiting time.

I drove back to the shop trying to figure out what I was going to tell that adjuster. It wasn’t my fault but I knew if he didn’t have a heart attack that he was going to scream and holler at me. I think it took me a day or two before I got the nerve up to call the adjuster. The total repair cost for this vehicle was now $500 over the book value. I just wished that they had totaled it. We had already told Mr. J. that he was getting new seat covers so there was no going back on that.

I finally called the adjuster and I really thought he was going to have a heart attack. He was so mad and it was at me. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was not my fault that the Audi dealership had gone out of business and the Volkswagen parts department sucked at getting Audi parts. He lost the USAA account over this car.

Well, now then, I had to call Mr. J and tell him the news. I was expecting to get screamed at again, especially since I would have the car for another 6 to 12 months. This man was making payments on a car that had not been driven for a year already. Surprisingly he took the info very well.

He came by the shop and told me not to worry about ordering the seat covers. He said that he would take care of it. Now, Mr. J. never told me the whole story, but those seat covers showed up in just under a month. I really believe that he used his military connections in Germany to get those seat covers. I think that they probably were shipped by military cargo. I just never knew how those seat covers got here. We finished up the car and Mr. J. picked it up and paid me. I had now had that car over 1 year. I was sick of Audis.

Mr. J. asked me to keep some of the parts that I had replaced because he was going to sue USAA. He was upset at how the whole situation was handled. I told him I would keep the parts for a short while. That damn car was still haunting me; I got rid of the car but not the used parts.

I kept the parts for a couple of months and had not heard from Mr. J. I called his house and his wife answered the phone. I explained the situation to her and asked her if she knew if he still needed the parts. They were taking up room in my shop. She just started laughing. Not seeing anything funny in the situation, I asked her what was so funny?

She said Mr. J. didn’t own the Audi anymore. Two weeks after he picked the car up from my shop he was rear ended in the Audi. He got rid of that jinxed car. To this day, I remember this car like it was yesterday and it has almost been 30 years. I still don’t like Audi's.