"Are you traveling for business or pleasure?"

That was the second question that an Audi Corporate chauffer greeted me with, as I arrived in Munich over an hour behind schedule. "I'm picking up an S4. So pleasure, of course!", I replied with a smile. "S4?! Wow, understood, Sir." and we got into his A8L - more on that later.

For those of you not in the loop, I took delivery of a brand new 2011 Audi S4 today at Audi headquarters in Ingolstadt. It's kind of a ceremonious process that involves an optional factory and museum tours. I took both and while the museum was nice to look at, the factory tour just blew me away. Unfortunately photography was strictly prohibited so i can only describe it. For a tech junkie like myself, there isn't much more exciting then watching a team of robots assembling and welding a frame together. Watching towering presses, stamp out parts like a paper copier also left me in awe. Then of course I was impressed with the precision and meticulous nature of the whole process.

So anyways I just got back to the hotel after a day in Ingolstadt, culminating with my first drive down the autobahn to the Kempinski Munich hotel(compliments of audi). Now I won't go into all the details. Having not slept much in the past day, I'll just share some of the good and the not so good moments of the day.

- Lufthansa DID let me down. Landed about an hour late, but Thomas (chauffer) made up some time on the autobahn.

- There might not be a better place to sit than in the back of a new Audi A8L.

-Branding gone too far or just ingenious?

-Had to wait a few hours for the Forum to put winter tires on. That's something they should have already had done. Then I'm pretty sure they messed up the wheel alignment in the process - car pulls slightly to the right. I'll have that taken a look at tomorrow.

- Other than the alignment issue the car looks and drives brilliantly. The autobahn was pretty packed driving back to Munich, but had a few spurts of 110+mph, but the car begged for more - sorry car!

- The Bang & Olufsen sounds system sounds fantastic.

- Ketchup in Germany tastes like it's actually made from tomatoes. Not sure if that's a good thing - kind of grew fond of the artificial stuff.

And BTW, here is the car:

Later