Good Luck Sleeping Tonight

“Good luck sleeping tonight”

Was what the Audi salesman at Tetbury Audi (UK), said to me the evening before my Audi TTS was set to arrive. It had been a week since I had signed the papers and forked over the cash.

At the time it was every penny I had in the world. £24,000. 

That sounds like a stupid financial decision. And it was, BUT, the business I was running at the time didn’t seem to be going anywhere and for that brief window when I bought it - and as I had decided to quit university only days before - I was living at home with my parents. Which meant I was fortunate enough that all my next pennies could go towards fuel and insurance without taking food off my table. Thanks mum.

3 months later I moved to Canada… for 11 years. Which meant my brother got to enjoy my hard earned Audi TTS for 2 more years before I stopped being in denial about where I lived and eventually sold it. But that’s a different story.

I mention the Audi salesman’s words because it evoked an emotion that if I could bottle, I’d be able to buy three, no, FOUR more Audi TTS’s with the profits. I was, as they say, beside myself. Never before or since (including an F Type R and a Century) have I been so excited for a car, or purchase of any kind.

I also think the whole experience of receiving the car, one that I had worked night and day to afford for four years, was magical in a way that can't be replicated. Looking at it that way though, £24,000 in four years with no rent or expenses suddenly seems less impressive. I would have made more as a bartender.

For the previous 5 years, my £2,000 Vauxhall Corsa had given me freedom. But when my Audi TTS came, I had arrived.

Not only was the car itself a wonder to me, as it was a car whose interior had been my desktop wallpaper for 2 years (after I’d switched it from a VW Scirocco wallpaper), but it was the crystallization and materialization of all the work I’d put in to get there. All the lectures at university I’d missed, all the nights out I hadn’t gone to, all the girls I hadn’t….held hands with.

I was a bundle of nerves, anticipation, and energy.

So excited was the male half of my family, that my brother, my dad and my grandfather all walked out to receive it with me at my family home, as Audi Tetbury had been so kind to send it with a driver, rather than make me go almost to Wales again to get it.

And boy did it arrive in style!

White. S badged. Chrome wing mirrors. Facelifted, spoiler up.

I had my face pressed against the window for an hour before it pulled up.

Out of it stepped an older gentleman in FULL AUDI RACING GEAR, holding a bottle of champagne. I wish I’d got a photo. At first he tried to pass the champagne to my grandpa, then to my dad, and then, after a final head shake from my brother, to me.

His surprise that he was handing the champagne and the keys to the youngest member of the group matched my grandfather’s disdain. As he dropped them in my hand, my grandpa said something along the lines of “he’s too young for something like this. It’s ridiculous. Too fast.”

The rest of the day was a bit of a blur. But I remember two things. First, I took my brother out for a first drive just around the little town of Bushey Heath where we lived, watching the car’s reflection in the windows of the shops, and doing a little pull every few minutes from 20mph to 33mph and giggling. Yes, we were well-behaved back then and keep in mind, my previous car had a horsepower number in the double digits, and no turbos.

But after that, I rushed back to my computer to carry on working because it suddenly dawned on me that I had emptied my bank account for a car that I now had to run. So I chucked my brother the keys and told him to go for an evening drive.

30 minutes later he came back, walked into my bedroom looking positively post-coital, and said “you have to, HAVE to go and drive that thing again, properly this time: go on the M1.”

20 minutes after that, I was FLYING on the motorway, going speeds that could have me in jail and riding a high I thought only possible due to naughty pills. I found myself teary-eyed and smacking the dashboard screaming “HE’S ONLY GONE AND FUCKING DONE IT. HE’S ONLY GONE AND FUCKING DONE IT, SON.”

That, that was good. Third-person levels of good.

Considering I only lost a couple of grand on the car in almost 3 years of ownership (+ 500 quid for a window wiper motor replacement and another 500 for a Haldex pump fix), I’d like to say that moment alone was worth every penny of the loss.

And all for a 4-cylinder Audi!! Nothing has quite matched that day.

Bonus mini-story:

Some years later when I sold the business in Canada and bought an F-Type R, I flew my Dad into Toronto to get it with me. The car itself was in Montreal so we had to drive my Subaru BRZ 6 hours to get there, with no intention of bringing the Subaru back. The smiles and joy of picking up that thing, and revving it for the first time came close to the Audi day but still didn’t quite match it.

However, some weeks later my brother happened to be visiting from England.

I hadn’t told him about the Jag. All he knew was that my license plate for the Subaru was 4 SAGAN, the one that currently bookends my Mazda MX-5. My brother is not a jealous brother. I was lucky enough to end up with one of the proud ones.

In this glorious clip of him finding out about the car for the first time in an underground car park, you can just about hear him read the first half of the plate out loud before the realization hits. Keep in mind, no car we’d even been in, let alone owned before this, came close to the F Type’s status and power. Very glad I got this video, even if it was filmed a bit guerrilla. NOTE: EXTREME LANGUAGE. Enjoy!

Also, I’m sure you all have some exciting car pick-up moments. Feel free to drop some anecdotes in the latest video discussion section of discord for us all to read!