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Well Chaps, Ive been on this forum for around 18 months now (a big thank you for the advice and help I have received so far) and thought it was about time to share my RS2 story with you:
My RS2 story starts back in 2001 when Dad purchased his RS2 when he was engaged to a woman who had young children. They wanted a performance car with 5 seats, I suggested an RS2 that I had found at an Audi Dealer in the South Island. Dad had always been an RS2 fan since they were released (he had been an Audi/VW dealer in the mid 90’s). The other car that was of interest to them at the time was a new Mk4 Golf 4motion V6. The day came when Dad told me that they had decided to run with the Golf instead of the RS2! I was gutted, but somehow didn’t believe him. The time came when the Golf was meant to arrive, it was meant to be transported down from Auckland to the local transporter depo in Napier, then put onto another Transporter to ship it to Hastings (20kms) to Dads now Holden and HSV dealership. In my lunch break (I was working in the Uni holidays) I shot down to the Transport company to catch first glimpse of the new Golf, to my great surprise there was no Golf, but a gleaming RS Blue RS2, I was stoked, over the moon but didn’t let on to anyone that I knew. 4pm rolled round and I received a phone call from Dad to say that the Golf had been dropped off to his dealership and asked if I would be keen to drive in back home to Napier. Hell yeah! I scored myself a lift to Dads work is Hastings to find the RS2 sitting waiting for me in the service department. What a site, talk about a kid in a candy story!
Dad came out off his office with a big grin on his face and handed me the keys to the RS2, with the words “take it easy”.
I was honored to be the first in the family to drive the car. Most of the 20km trip from Hastings back to Napier was in a 100km/h zone. Half way through the trip home I had been very careful and hadn’t even been above 3,000rpm, this was about to change . . . I saw a gap in the traffic and decided I was going to pass a slow car, I down shifted to 3rd gear (doing about 85km/h) and booted it, Ohhhhh,myyyyyyyyyyyyy, godddd!!!!! The kick in my back, the way the front of the car lifted, the sensation of an airplane screaming down a runway, I was hooked! From that point I always said I wanted to own an own RS2.
Fast forward to 2003 and Dad and his partner had parted ways. As much as Dad wanted to keep the RS2 she took the car as transport for her and her 3 children (she was a petrol head as well).
From that point I decided to start an RS2 register which with a help of friends on www.vask.org.nz (NZ’s only Audi & VW car club) I completed a few years later (15 cars in total).
Fast forward another few years to 2006 and while participating in a track day in my Mk1 GTI I got wind of another RS Blue RS2 for sale in Wellington, I quickly phoned Dad to let him know as I knew he was keen on another. Dad was also good friends with the Wellington Audi dealer where it was being sold on behalf. At this time I was going out with a woman who lived in Wellington (325kms away from home), it was my turn to travel down to visit her, my main goal that weekend was checking out the RS2 for Dad.
When I got to view the car I was very disappointed, the brakes were shot, the tyres were poked and the drives seat was falling apart, it was know where close to the immaculate example of an RS2 that Dad owned, on my advice he flagged it.
The car was then purchased by an owner of a newly formed roofing company down in Wellington. The owner of the car put the car into the company’s name, for tax purposes I suspect.
Ive always kept an eye on all of the New Zealand RS2’s via my RS2 register and through the renewing of the cars registrations and WOFS’s (MOT’s). The RS Blue Wellington based RS2 stopped getting WOF’s and Registrations, I feared that the NZ had lost its first RS2 in an accident. I decided to investigate, I found the roofing companies (owner of the car) website and phoned the 3 mobile numbers advertised, none of the numbers connected. I tracked down the company owners home phone number, it was cut off. I then checked with the New Zealand companies office and found that the company was in liquidation. I phoned the liquaters to show my interest in the car if it was still alive, they told me that the owner had sold the car off to an unknown purchaser in Auckland but they were after it as money was still owing. I knew the car was still alive and not written off but I also knew that the ownership details hadn’t changed. Unfortunately by this point the cars Registration had lapsed for 12 months which meant that in the eyes of the NZ LTSA (Land Transport), the car was no longer legally on the road.
It seemed that all my effort to find the car was a waste of time.
The following weekend my brother was heading down to Wellington and visit friends and test drive a E46 M3 that was for sale at Wellington’s Audi dealership (now under new ownership). The sales man was a friendly chap so my brother said, keen on selling my brother the M3. After the test driving the M3 my brother poked his head around the corner of the service lane to spot the RS2! It was looking very unloved, dirty with supermarket dents, one mismatched tyre which was flat. My brother quickly phoned me to share what he had found, I was over the moon, I asked him to enquire about the car. He went and spoke to his friendly salesman who on questioning about the RS2 was not friendly at all, stating “I don’t want to talk about it”.
Monday came around and I quickly phoned up the liquaters, the lady who I had spoken with the week earlier was very short with me, and before I even got a word in stated if she had found the car he would have contacted me. To her shock I stated that I had found the car and told her where she could find it. That day they picked up the car.
A month or so later I was informed that the car was going to auction, I hadn’t seen the car since 2006 and couldn’t get off work to head down to Wellington to view the car myself. There were rumours going round that people wanted to buy the car and part it out. Not on my watc!. I had a Wellington based mate of mine go and check the car out on my behalf. As the car was deregistered it couldn’t be driven but it could be started and checked over. From the check over it seemed the car was in good mechanical health, no smoke on start up, no noisy tappets, brakes in good nick, shocks werent leaking etc etc. The body did have supermarket dents and scuffed and stone chipped bumpers though and at least one tyre needed to be replaced to make a full set.
Auction day came round and I had had a sleepless night thinking about what Im prepared to pay for the car. My Father was going to bid on my behalf because being a car dealer we didn’t have to pay as higher success fees as the public. 11am and I was down at Dads office for the auction. I told Dad my price limit and that was to be it. The auction started, Dad was bidding and writing down numbers in an order that didn’t make any sense. The bidding was going nuts, people bidding left, right and center. I couldn’t believe how much interest the car had that very few people in NZ know anything about. I figured out Dads numeric scribble, and he was close to my limit . . . Then he went straight passed it! I was like WTF, stop, stop, stop! He looked up at me, the auction had slowed to a 2 horse race and we weren’t holding the lead bid. Dad said “Are you sure?” I looked at him and said “F@ck it, one more bid”, and with that I won my RS2! I was over the moon, even though I paid 15% more than the limited I had set myself.
Ill most some pics and more info over the next few days.
My RS2 story starts back in 2001 when Dad purchased his RS2 when he was engaged to a woman who had young children. They wanted a performance car with 5 seats, I suggested an RS2 that I had found at an Audi Dealer in the South Island. Dad had always been an RS2 fan since they were released (he had been an Audi/VW dealer in the mid 90’s). The other car that was of interest to them at the time was a new Mk4 Golf 4motion V6. The day came when Dad told me that they had decided to run with the Golf instead of the RS2! I was gutted, but somehow didn’t believe him. The time came when the Golf was meant to arrive, it was meant to be transported down from Auckland to the local transporter depo in Napier, then put onto another Transporter to ship it to Hastings (20kms) to Dads now Holden and HSV dealership. In my lunch break (I was working in the Uni holidays) I shot down to the Transport company to catch first glimpse of the new Golf, to my great surprise there was no Golf, but a gleaming RS Blue RS2, I was stoked, over the moon but didn’t let on to anyone that I knew. 4pm rolled round and I received a phone call from Dad to say that the Golf had been dropped off to his dealership and asked if I would be keen to drive in back home to Napier. Hell yeah! I scored myself a lift to Dads work is Hastings to find the RS2 sitting waiting for me in the service department. What a site, talk about a kid in a candy story!
Dad came out off his office with a big grin on his face and handed me the keys to the RS2, with the words “take it easy”.
I was honored to be the first in the family to drive the car. Most of the 20km trip from Hastings back to Napier was in a 100km/h zone. Half way through the trip home I had been very careful and hadn’t even been above 3,000rpm, this was about to change . . . I saw a gap in the traffic and decided I was going to pass a slow car, I down shifted to 3rd gear (doing about 85km/h) and booted it, Ohhhhh,myyyyyyyyyyyyy, godddd!!!!! The kick in my back, the way the front of the car lifted, the sensation of an airplane screaming down a runway, I was hooked! From that point I always said I wanted to own an own RS2.
Fast forward to 2003 and Dad and his partner had parted ways. As much as Dad wanted to keep the RS2 she took the car as transport for her and her 3 children (she was a petrol head as well).
From that point I decided to start an RS2 register which with a help of friends on www.vask.org.nz (NZ’s only Audi & VW car club) I completed a few years later (15 cars in total).
Fast forward another few years to 2006 and while participating in a track day in my Mk1 GTI I got wind of another RS Blue RS2 for sale in Wellington, I quickly phoned Dad to let him know as I knew he was keen on another. Dad was also good friends with the Wellington Audi dealer where it was being sold on behalf. At this time I was going out with a woman who lived in Wellington (325kms away from home), it was my turn to travel down to visit her, my main goal that weekend was checking out the RS2 for Dad.
When I got to view the car I was very disappointed, the brakes were shot, the tyres were poked and the drives seat was falling apart, it was know where close to the immaculate example of an RS2 that Dad owned, on my advice he flagged it.
The car was then purchased by an owner of a newly formed roofing company down in Wellington. The owner of the car put the car into the company’s name, for tax purposes I suspect.
Ive always kept an eye on all of the New Zealand RS2’s via my RS2 register and through the renewing of the cars registrations and WOFS’s (MOT’s). The RS Blue Wellington based RS2 stopped getting WOF’s and Registrations, I feared that the NZ had lost its first RS2 in an accident. I decided to investigate, I found the roofing companies (owner of the car) website and phoned the 3 mobile numbers advertised, none of the numbers connected. I tracked down the company owners home phone number, it was cut off. I then checked with the New Zealand companies office and found that the company was in liquidation. I phoned the liquaters to show my interest in the car if it was still alive, they told me that the owner had sold the car off to an unknown purchaser in Auckland but they were after it as money was still owing. I knew the car was still alive and not written off but I also knew that the ownership details hadn’t changed. Unfortunately by this point the cars Registration had lapsed for 12 months which meant that in the eyes of the NZ LTSA (Land Transport), the car was no longer legally on the road.
It seemed that all my effort to find the car was a waste of time.
The following weekend my brother was heading down to Wellington and visit friends and test drive a E46 M3 that was for sale at Wellington’s Audi dealership (now under new ownership). The sales man was a friendly chap so my brother said, keen on selling my brother the M3. After the test driving the M3 my brother poked his head around the corner of the service lane to spot the RS2! It was looking very unloved, dirty with supermarket dents, one mismatched tyre which was flat. My brother quickly phoned me to share what he had found, I was over the moon, I asked him to enquire about the car. He went and spoke to his friendly salesman who on questioning about the RS2 was not friendly at all, stating “I don’t want to talk about it”.
Monday came around and I quickly phoned up the liquaters, the lady who I had spoken with the week earlier was very short with me, and before I even got a word in stated if she had found the car he would have contacted me. To her shock I stated that I had found the car and told her where she could find it. That day they picked up the car.
A month or so later I was informed that the car was going to auction, I hadn’t seen the car since 2006 and couldn’t get off work to head down to Wellington to view the car myself. There were rumours going round that people wanted to buy the car and part it out. Not on my watc!. I had a Wellington based mate of mine go and check the car out on my behalf. As the car was deregistered it couldn’t be driven but it could be started and checked over. From the check over it seemed the car was in good mechanical health, no smoke on start up, no noisy tappets, brakes in good nick, shocks werent leaking etc etc. The body did have supermarket dents and scuffed and stone chipped bumpers though and at least one tyre needed to be replaced to make a full set.
Auction day came round and I had had a sleepless night thinking about what Im prepared to pay for the car. My Father was going to bid on my behalf because being a car dealer we didn’t have to pay as higher success fees as the public. 11am and I was down at Dads office for the auction. I told Dad my price limit and that was to be it. The auction started, Dad was bidding and writing down numbers in an order that didn’t make any sense. The bidding was going nuts, people bidding left, right and center. I couldn’t believe how much interest the car had that very few people in NZ know anything about. I figured out Dads numeric scribble, and he was close to my limit . . . Then he went straight passed it! I was like WTF, stop, stop, stop! He looked up at me, the auction had slowed to a 2 horse race and we weren’t holding the lead bid. Dad said “Are you sure?” I looked at him and said “F@ck it, one more bid”, and with that I won my RS2! I was over the moon, even though I paid 15% more than the limited I had set myself.
Ill most some pics and more info over the next few days.
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