ooooIYKYK, ISSUE #oo45, SUBSCRIBE TO THIS NEWSLETTER ON SUBSTACK.
Alright. I’ve got two themes this week — time and the absurdity of our particular moment in it.
What’s that got to do with cars or Audi? Stick with me for a moment.
“Time is an abstract concept. I’ve got a watch.”
The quote comes from The Young Ones, a British ‘80s comedy about four roommates at “Scumbag College” — a punk rocker, a hippie, an anarchist and one relatively normal guy trying to coexist with the chaos around him.
The show became a staple of British alternative comedy, though the line itself was really about the absurdist intellectualism of young people trying to figure themselves out at a pivotal point in their lives. For me, growing up in the ‘80s and discovering alternative music while flipping through record bins in a small Pennsylvania town, it resonated. There was something appealing about rejecting the version of normal the world seemed intent on handing me.
Decades later, I still find myself drawn to those same instincts — the willingness to push against whatever becomes the accepted formula if I’m not entirely convinced of it, even when doing so comes at a cost.
That affinity for the alternative is one of the things that drew me to Audi in the first place. When seemingly everyone else defined luxury and performance through rear-wheel drive, Audi leaned into the cards it had to play and doubled down on quattro. The cool kids at my school aspired to a BMW 3 Series (E30), fantasized about Porsche 911s or Ferraris, but I found myself appreciating Audi specifically because it insisted on carving its own path.
That thread runs throughout the company’s history, and one of the clearest examples is the Silver Arrows era — Ferdinand Porsche-designed, aluminum-bodied, mid-engine race cars that challenged convention in competition that included what was effectively the pre-war equivalent of Formula 1. Among them was the Auto Union Type A “Lucca” Rekordwagen that Audi Tradition just recreated from scratch after decades lost to history.
The original car disappeared long ago. It may have simply become obsolete and been cannibalized for parts by the team itself. If not, it was likely lost in the chaos of postwar Germany. Whatever the case, bringing it back required Audi Tradition and its construction partners to effectively build a time machine — something they’ve proven remarkably adept at doing.
And they did.
If you’re a regular reader of ooooIYKYK.com, you may have already seen the Auto Union Type A Rekordwagen added to the Audi archives several weeks ago. You may also have noticed the teasers Audi Tradition quietly released over the past week for those paying attention. Today brought the full reveal.
That came just one week after the Miami Grand Prix, which matters in the context of this story because of what followed — the inevitable flood of social media content surrounding the event.
Miami has become famous for a sort of curated opulence that attracts influencers like moths to a flame, largely because brands with substantial marketing budgets are eager to put them there. The result is an endless stream of fast-talking walkarounds, celebrity sightings and short clips engineered to stop your thumb mid-scroll for just long enough. Engagement becomes the metric. Viewer counts become the metric. Everything else increasingly feels secondary.
That creates a challenge for publications like this one.
The mainstream social platforms reward a very specific kind of delivery, and the people who succeed on them tend to adapt accordingly by building for the algorithm — YouTuber face thumbnails, lip-sync audio, green-screen reactions, carousel dumps, “look what I’m doing” content or the increasingly common trend of presenting quick commentary as expertise. The format itself often matters more than the substance underneath it.
As a journalist, I find myself increasingly less interested in playing that game.
There’s no question these platforms are essential to building an audience in today’s media landscape, but when the story starts becoming more about the person delivering it than the subject itself, it wears on me. It wears on me every time I see a journalist standing in front of a supposedly secret reveal that has clearly been staged for social distribution from the outset.
I believe the story shouldn’t be about me.
That doesn’t mean personal perspective never belongs here. It does, and I include it regularly. But this site isn’t about George. It’s about Audi. It’s about the cars, the history, the engineering, the places they take people and the ideas attached to them. It’s about what you imagine doing with your car — not what I’m specifically getting to do with mine.
The goal is to educate and entertain, not to function as a rolling reality show trying to cram journalism into a reel measured in seconds.
That approach probably won’t always win in an algorithm-driven media landscape benchmarking virality, but that comes with the territory. It’s a tradeoff this publication willingly embraces, much like I embraced alternative music and culture in the ‘80s or the unconventional path Auto Union then later Audi took when it chose to challenge the established order instead of following it.
NEXT UP THIS WEEK’S NEWS & FEATURES
Full Miami GP Weekend Coverage
CURATED PODCASTS & VIDEO CONTENT
F1 Commentator Sam Collins Part 2, Talking F1 & the Season Thus Far | ooooIYKYK Podcast
Black Optics – A Trend That Ruined Audis Identity | Auditography
Bye Bye AUDI A8 – The Story of a Legend | B Sport
Ultrace 2026 Düsseldorf Germany | Tuning Glimpses
A Goodbye that Doesn’t Feel Right… 2026 Audi RS 3 competition limited | Auditography
Interview with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali | Autosport
1988 Audi 200 Trans-Am at Long Beach HMSA with Zak Brown | Marshall Pruett Podcast
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