Who is the Lord of the Four Rings?

In what was perhaps the most bizarre day for motoring journalists, PGA Cars, the newly appointed Philippine distributor for Audi cars, officially kicked off its assault on the luxury car segment with a driver training program in Clarkfield, Pampanga, using the top of the line, W12, 6.0-liter, Audi A8 and the 4.2-liter, V8 Audi A6. I say "bizarre", because as the press headed up to Clark for the Audi event, another invite came from "Audi" asking us to attend an Audi event later that night at the Mandarin hotel. I remember thinking, "An appropriate logo these guys have: they seem to be going around in circles." Trust me, I was more confused than you are right now. Let me explain.

Me being me, I confused the two invites. I honestly thought it came from the same source. Sure, I found it strange that Audi was inviting us up to Clark, only for them to ask us to race back down to Manila for dinner, but hey, stranger things have happened. And a stranger thing did. After the long drive down from Clark, I walked into the Auto Prominence press conference weary and haggard, still wearing a PGA activity shirt. It was one of those Mastercard moments. Priceless.

I’m sorry if you think you’ve just stumbled across Boy Abunda’s motoring column, but please, bear with me for a second. I cannot in total fairness proceed to cover the launch in Clark without delving somewhat into the background of Audi here in the Philippines. The whole reason for Audi shipping over five cars from Germany to Manila for five days of driving activities in the first place, was to rebuild the image of their brand locally — an image that Audi AG feels has been tarnished by their former distributor, Auto Prominence Corp (APC).

In the end, PGA Cars was eventually awarded the contract after a bitter exchange between Audi AG and APC that resulted in APC filing criminal and civil charges against the German giants. After a lot of finger pointing and aerial photographs of the 26.7 hectare assembly plant in Alaminos, Pangasinan, the fact remains that from a consumer’s perspective, APC has never once come even close to staging an event of this magnitude during their ten years of distributing the Audi brand. And that is apparently what upset the Germans.

Bring on the big boys, then. Harald and Kristoff are two very big German men with even bigger experiences behind the wheel of Audi cars. Both have come from motorsports backgrounds but were here to give the press and members of the Audi club a taste of what their machines are capable of. They are the Quattro Driving Experience instructors and they have an incredible feel and knack for being able wring out the most out of anything on four wheels.

First up was emergency braking exercises. The object was to bring the two ton, 12 cylinder Audi A8 up to speed — 100 km/h in this case — and then brake at the latest possible point and steer the vehicle around the obstruction under full braking. The point was to demonstrate the awesome stopping power from this massive German heavyweight. It takes less than six seconds to get all this chrome, leather and wood up to speed and less than half of that time to park it in the designated stopping box a few meters ahead. Aside from the impressive bite from those dinner-plate-sized, four wheel discs that wash away all that unwanted speed, it was the composure of the vehicle under such strenuous load that really leaves an impression.

Traditionally, any type of violent transfer of weight in a moving vehicle translates to loss of control. Audi uses sensors to detect wheel slippage and can redistribute braking forces to the appropriate wheels to keep the car "shiny side up".

After getting our fill of negative G forces, it was off to stage two — a sweeping fast right hander that was sprayed down with water to illustrate the effects of oversteer and understeer and how to properly react to both. The vehicles used for this demonstration were three brand spanking new Audi A6, 4.2-liter V8 Quattros. To exaggerate the effects, the instructors disabled the alphabet (ABS, EBD, ESM, blah, blah, blah…). The results were comical. It is amazing how quickly we grow dependent on these safety features. Majority of participants went sliding out of control, disfiguring hapless orange cones in the process. Even though I was able to break the tail free, it took an awful amount of effort to get the car to betray you. Such is the advantage of the Quattro system.

Later, an understeer course was designed to understand the dynamics of the car and to improve your skills in managing an emergency situation. They call it the Kamm’s circle. Kamm was a physics professor that determined the parameters of which a vehicle can be safely pushed before losing control. In simple terms, a vehicle’s performance all comes down to four tiny little contact patches or rubber no larger than the size of, say, a CD. No matter what electronic trickery you employ, the laws of physics cannot be cheated. If you exceed the vehicle’s grip either in braking, acceleration, cornering or a combination of any two combined forces, you will lose time, control and — God forbid — the whole car in the process.

The Quattro system is able to increase that margin that we are normally used to. Because it shares the load with all four wheels, we are now able to push the vehicle even harder before slippage. Though it doesn’t offer any more advantage in neutral cornering, its effects can be felt when accelerating — even during hard cornering, where you are able to get on the power earlier and with greater force because you are distributing the traction evenly to all four wheels and therefore reducing the burden on the tires. Remember, all the power on earth is useless unless it is transmitted properly. Just look at our politicians.

Perhaps the trickiest exercise was the high speed emergency lane change. In this situation, participants were instructed to enter a gate of orange cones at 100 km/h and perform an emergency avoidance maneuver and enter an exit gate without hitting the brakes or losing control of the vehicle. A lot trickier than it sounds. The most common mistake is made when the driver fails to point the car back in the intended direction. A sharp turn right followed by a full turn left and then quickly centering the wheel proved too much for eight out of the ten participants that gave it a go. Most spun out of control, some entered the gate sideways, while PGA Cars Chairman, Robert Coiyuto, crossed the finish line whilst in the middle of his 360 degree spin. Visually, he won the driver of the day award in my book.

As difficult as it all was, once the stability control was re activated, the instructor was able to swerve right, swerve left and then let go of the steering wheel altogether and miraculously, the car pointed itself to the correct spot without any fuss or drama whatsoever. Proving beyond words that Audi is at the forefront of safety, technology and engineering. Impressive. Now, if only Audi could have had stability control for their dealers and distributors...