Yeah! It's a historic parrallelism that René Bonnet
and Charles Deutsch (Deutsch-Bonnet / D.B: HBR
coach) were on silimar paths with Colin Chapman
(Lotus: Elite) in the mid 50s.
With glassfibre body and ultralight (Lotus) or rigid
(D.B) frame-concepts they had the same aim.
Better perfomance and roadholding through
("just add") lightness.
Ultra-small motors nevertheless in this case were
enough for astonishing performances.
Both had the same problems on the racetrack
because of their fragility...
The 3-litre-joke is new for me. I read the biography
of senior VW-leader Ferdinand Piech who was chief-
race-engineer at Porsche at the end of the 60s. He's
one of the most important protagonists concerning
lightweight and proposed the former leader of Austria,
Franz Vranitzky (who wanted a 5 -litre-car) "why not
a 3-litre-car"? That was in the early 90s. 1999 VW came
out with the Lupo 3L. The revolution in body-structure
of small cars was the A2 in 2000, the same year, the
Honda Insight appeared. BOTH cars have a full alloy
structure with "Space-Frame" (Audi-patented) structure.
I don't know where Honda took their knowlegde to
invent their structure. Did they take a licence of Audi?
In any case these two vehicles wrote history, not many
of the journalists took real notice, but the ones who drove
these cars were fascinated. I'm curious about the com-
ments one will read in 10 or 15 years when other cars
MAYBE reach similar refinement. I hope to be able to
hold mine till then, because I love historic AND rare cars.
Why not drive a future historic car, with having lots of
fun and profit in everyday use? A 40 years old car never
can be a concurrent to it, at least because of corrosion!
Till soon, yours, Michael
P.S.: John, do you mean how many cars or how much
money for them? I can answer both. Audi built about
8.000 3L-A2s. About 4.500 were sold in Germany.
I observe the offers on the virtual market since more
than two years now. There never were offered more
than perhaps 40 at a time. At the moment there are
about 15, most of them over 60k miles. The cheapest
is about 8.500 EUR. With accident or damages lower,
but under 40k miles (as mine from 2001) you pay at
least 12.500 EUR. Very sought after are "full option"
models which are relatively rare (esp. 34 litres tank).