Back when Waterfest was first held in 1994, the landscape for enthusiast shows was just a bit different. The web was in its infancy, which is to say not much more than a few college students doing a bit of rudimentary coding. Audi of America was hanging by a thread because desperately-needed product like the B5 A4 hadn’t yet hit the market. Much has changed in eighteen years.
For those who weren’t there at the time, the name ‘Waterfest’ came from ‘water-cooled’. The show was started by New York Volkswagen (and Audi) tuner Rapid Parts as an alternative event for owners of then newer Volkswagens who felt out of place at the plethora of air-cooled Volkswagen events around the country. Rapid Parts thought there was market for a split of this burgeoning demographic and eighteen years plus consecutive record-breaking with this event seems to suggest they were right.
Fast forward to 2012. The show has changed substantially since its first years held in the parking lot of a New York community college. Its home in more recent years has been Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ – one of the few venues in the region that could contain this crowd of rabid fans. Event organizers repeatedly tell us that numbers continue to set records, though eyeballing the parking lot and comparing it with our memory seems to suggest this might not be entirely the case.
A more scientific method of measuring success might be sales figures. Polling big vendors such as APR, 42 Draft Designs and NGP suggests the growth hasn’t let up. Several chip tuners this year offered the usual row-upon-row of flashing stations while APR and Billy Boat exhausts both even offered free exhaust installation while you wait and on show grounds. The measured success of attendance may be debatable, but the growth of sales in vendor row seems indisputable.
Also solidly in the growth category is the subject of Audi. Eighteen years on, Audi isn’t exactly hanging by a thread. Instead the brand of the four rings is in record territory… as in all-time record for this market and also worldwide. Audi is hot and there seemed no question of that either amongst the fans on the field or the vendors in their rows.
Looking back on it, we can’t remember a single year at Waterfest that was so awash with four-ringers. The number of fan-owned cars, from the nicely tailored to the brutally beat, was off the charts. The number of spectacles brought in by vendors was also gargantuan, and we could make a quick and by no means complete list that would make any Audi fan drool: R8 LMP900 Le Mans race car, R8 GRAND-AM race cars (three of the four that compete in GRAND-AM), new S8, new S7, new S6, new RS 5, new S4, new S5, new allroad, Q3 (not even out yet), supercharged R8 Spyders, a collection of B5 RS 4s, etc., etc., etc.
There was even an organized event for Audi owners after the show. While the usual impromptu hangout at Chili’s was thin perhaps due to a heavy police presence, many Audi owners instead headed over to a dinner organized by Audizine and sponsored by AWE Tuning at a nearby hotel.
After eighteen years of operation, Waterfest has firmly planted itself as the defacto largest enthusiast show for fans of Audi and Volkswagen in the USA. Over that time the scope has shifted, and for Audi fans that has become a very good thing. Audis were an oddity during those early years of Waterfest whereas today they are a very big and very important part of the scene.
Editor’s Note: Below are several images picked by our editors – highlights of what we saw and what we liked. A link to a full photo gallery from Waterfest 2012 can be found at the bottom of the page and also HERE.
Part of Audi of America’s own heritage collection, the car you see here is a 2005 Audi R8 LMP 900. This is the same car driven by Tom Kristensen to his record-breaking win at Le Mans back in 2005 running a white Champion Racing livery. A year later it won the final race for an R8 in competition at Lime Rock Park with Allan McNish and Dindo Capello at the wheel. The car has serious heritage and was displayed with Audi’s generous approval in the Fourtitude stand.
Also part of the Fourtitude display were two other cars attending the event on loan from Audi’s North American headquarters. To the right is a German market Q3 that heralds the model’s launch in late 2013 as a 2014 model. The other is new facelifted Audi S5 owned by one of Audi’s product planners and fitted with Audi Accessories wheels plus 3M dark silver vinyl wrap with which Audi Accessories is also experimenting.
One of our favorite cars in the show field has to be this Audi Cabriolet. Its chassis dates back to the B3 era, though this car showed no age at all. Fresh white paint and tasteful modifications included those gorgeous BBS wheels and a tailored blue interior. While we often see high dollar restorations of Volkswagens from this period, we find most Audis of this age and on display tend to benefit mainly from performance upgrades (i.e. they’re quick, but not so pretty). Still sporting its automatic transmission (and likely an early 2.8-liter V6 had we gotten a look under the hood), this car may not be terribly fast but it was flawlessly built and with tasteful execution of its upgrades.
We asked around though couldn’t find the owner. Should you know him or her, tell that person to drop us a note. We’d love to shoot it for a feature story.
Our 2012 Frankenstein award must certainly go to this B5 we encountered on the show field on Saturday. The B5 just may have been the smallest longitudinal engine bay ever produced by Audi, so we were both surprised and impressed when we spotted a 4.2 V8 stuffed into one. Even crazier, this wasn’t one of the more compact chain-driven V8s Audi used to build the larger B6 and B7 S4s, but a longer belt-driven unit. Very impressive.
As title sponsor, APR Tuned always brings a big setup. This year the usual transport truck seemed to have multiplied and turned the company’s area into more of a full-on APR compound. We weren’t surprised to see project cars like the company’s new Stage III development TT RS, though we were pleasantly surprised to see both of their GRAND-AM racers on display as well. Fans of GRAND-AM may have also appreciated the fact that APR Motorsport driver Ian Baas was also floating around the show.
A third R8 GRAND-AM, of just four that have been raced in the USA, is that of New Jersey-based Limitless Racing. That car was also on display at Waterfest, this time with in the QuattroWorld booth.
One great way to see a show like Waterfest is with a large group of friends. Heading down in a convoy is always good quality time to spend so long as you avoid also spending it with local traffic enforcement. We caught up with this group by a new TT RS while photographing Waterfest’s vast non-judged show field. They asked us to take their picture and put it on the site. Here you go guys.
Regulars in the vendor area are also manufacturers like wheel companies BBS and Vossen. Many of the latter company’s new wheel designs were on display around a striking S5 Cabriolet and we found this design particularly pleasing. The look itself seems to be an updated take on the Audi design made popular by the B7 RS 4.
One of the key points of growth for the Audi presence at Waterfest this year was the sheer number of B8s on the scene. Large numbers of A5s, S5s, A4s and S4s descended upon Waterfest and this grey S5 with over-sized Audi tri-five wheels is just one very attractive example.
Oldschool Audis were less represented but still very much present. We ran into a group of Ur-S fans unsurprisingly gathered around this very clean C4 S4 on the far end of the non-judged field. One of the first modifications the owner pointed out to us were the shaved headlight washers. We’re guessing he assumed (correctly) the buck-toothed look of that giant intercooler and a four-inch exhaust at the rear were a little more obvious to spot. We hope to see you guys again at S-fest in August!
While perhaps not the most eye-grabbing B6 on the field (that honor might go to a bright blue B6/B7 mashup nearby… search the gallery as it’s not hard to spot), we just had to post this orange example as it shows just how bizarre Waterfest can be. Who’d have figured this would be the place where we’d see a full-on General Lee?
Back on the subject of B8s, we return to this particular S4. Lowered and with HRE wheels, we found it striking as it sat unassumingly in the show field.
This was Waterfest after all, so we’ll leave this on a shot of an Audi and a puddle. 2012 marked a show weekend free of any rain… a rarity for the event. Those vendors who arrived to set up on Friday weren’t so lucky and worked in one extremely wet environment. By show time all that was left were a few puddles in the non-judged show field. Any other evidentiary pooling had since been vacuumed up by raceway staff.
As mentioned, a full gallery of photos from this event can be found below. Also, if you’ve got a link to your own Waterfest gallery, make sure to post a link in the comments or in the discussion forum linked here. We’d love to see them.
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