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I was shooting the breeze with my next door neighbour the evening before last and it transpires he was a senior engineer for Audi in Ingolstadt some years ago (his wife was responsible for component stress analysis there).
He was chatting about my S and he mentioned in the very late 60's / very early 70's Audi covertly imported a Honda 1300 on behalf of VW. Apparently it wasn't only Toyota who were anxious about the 100 hp from the 1300's engine - VW were in a state of panic over Honda's air cooled four cylinder engine too. At the time their 1300 flat four was good for 40 something horsepower IIRC...
In the early 1970s, VW nearly went bust hanging on to Porsche's ideas stolen from Ledwinka in the 1930s.
Audi basically designed all of the water-cooled engines and most of the platforms that saved the company. The engines are still made today, unually with BL-style over-stroking to enlarge the capacity. Which is why they're rough...
It is quite well-known that the Honda 1300 scared a lot of people. Including Honda's own with its overheating problems, which is why they 'persuaded' Soichiro to retire to research...
His long time partner Kawamoto too over as CEO.
Basically a four-pot can be air-cooled on a naked bike. Bury it in the bonnet of a c/d-segment and it will overheat the middle pots. Especially at 76 BHP/Litre!
Originally Posted by Polemicist,Jun 10 2009, 10:37 AM
I'm looking forward to having further interesting chats with the man next door. He worked on several of the platforms developed by Audi.
Interestingly he is a fully committed FWD car owner - he won't entertain a RWD car as he opines they're inherently unstable.
Sometimes instability is a good thing! But not too much...
But the underrated Audi 80 (why did people worship those f ucking abysmal TaunusCortinas?) of 1973 had a forward-mounted EA827, pioneered negative scrub-radius steering (ask HIM about wheel offsets!) and had an innovative rear torsion beam axle. The car was all about stability. It was a very innovative car, in a deadpan conservative way. The 110BHP GTE engine got kidnapped for a very significant VW Golf, too!
The Audi 80 came into conversation too - I believe he worked on the suspension and platform.
He alluded to a very innovative rear suspension developed by Audi with an early iteration of passive RWS, it was patented but never developed due to the cost of production.
Honda 1300
