Audi Breaks Ski Jump Record Again For New TV Advert
Published 12 March 2005
A spectacular 1980s television commercial showing a gravity-defying
Audi quattro saloon climbing 47 metres of treacherously steep,
snow-covered ski jump has just been remade using a new A6 saloon to mark
the 25th Anniversary of quattro.
Fourteen years after rally ace Harald Demuth drove up Finland’s
Pitkävuori ski jump in a red Audi 100 CS quattro, setting a new record
in the process, Audi engineer Uwe Bleck has just followed suit in the
335PS V8-powered A6 4.2 quattro. Like its predecessor, the A6
highlighted the exceptional traction advantages of the quattro system by
reaching a height of 47 metres on a gradient of around 80 per cent or
37.5 degrees, and parking on the slope.
For complete authenticity in the 2005 advertisement, the original
timber-framed Pitkävuori ski jump, 300 miles north of Helsinki, was used
again, despite the fact that it was closed in 1994 and needed extensive
repairs before filming could commence.
In first gear, at 4,200rpm and travelling at about 37mph, the A6
stormed up the 80 per cent gradient with incredible ease, arriving at
the 47-metre-high starting gate normally reserved for skiers only nine
seconds after take-off. Uwe Bleck repeated this process a total of
eleven times for the advertisement, and said later: “I could have gone faster, even at the steepest point.”
The toughest test facing the all-Audi team behind the orchestration
and filming of the advert was keeping the A6 stationary at the top of
the narrow, slippery jump. To achieve this a special ‘roll back safety
device’ was built on a steel base plate and fitted to the under-body of
the A6. The sledge-like unit prevented the car from sliding back once it
had come to a stop, but was not able to pull it.
The only other very minor changes were to the automatic transmission,
which was fixed in first gear to prevent the usual slight momentary
power losses during gear changes, and to the wheels, which were fitted
with rally-style tyres with six millimetre spikes. Otherwise the A6 4.2
quattro was a completely normal production model.
This remarkable new Audi advertisement has been showing on television
in mainland Europe since March 5th, and may also be adapted for cinema
presentation. It has not yet been decided if Audi UK will integrate the
campaign into its 2005 advertising strategy.
