Audi NAIAS Display: Our First Stop
When we first stepped inside NAIAS, I felt like I was getting off the subway for the first time in Manhattan. I’m sure Lewis and Clark felt similarly on their trip to the Pacific, although I am not quite certain how they made it sans smartphone. There was so much going on: cars and flashing lights and spinning floors and seven-foot-tall models in stilettos and a bunch of businessmen in three-piece-suits admiring the models (the, uh, car models that is…) everywhere we looked.
Audi was to our left as we hesitantly walked forward, so we made the display our first stop. As newbies, we weren’t exactly sure how much to photograph and tweet about, so we haphazardly made our way through the floor layout, pointing and staring, as the seasoned vets snapped photos in two seconds and moved along to the next car apathetically.
The Audi allroad Shooting Brake was the big to-do in the section. Aside from having a terribly stupid name, it was a pretty sleek car that most definitely foreshadows the third-gen Audi TT. I did like the concept’s plug-in hybrid powertrain, which merited it Audi’s e-tron branding; it’s a 2.0-liter TFSI four-cylinder married to a dependable 40-kW electric motor (but also shacking up with an 85-kW motor on the rear axle). All these moving pieces working together yields 408 hp and 479 lb-ft of torque for the concept, and it can hit 62 mph in just over 4.5 seconds.
Marci and I also checked out the A3 Cabriolet, but I didn’t get the chance to sit inside because a group of B.O.-ridden businessmen crowed around it before my butt could lay claim. Already the show was getting insanely busy, and it had only been open for about an hour. As overwhelmed as ever, we made our way to our next stop: BMW.
Check out all the other pit stops on my tour through NAIAS:
Timothy Moore takes his leadership inspiration from Michael Scott, his writing inspiration from Mark Twain, and his dancing inspiration from every drunk white guy at a wedding. When Tim is not writing about cars and money, he’s working on his novel or reading someone else’s, geeking out over strategy board games, hiking with his pooch, or channeling his inner Linda Belcher over beers with his friends. See more articles by Timothy.