Welcome Arnie Roy as Audi Club of Arizona’s October Member of the Month!
I am an engineer by profession, and a car enthusiast at heart. I was born in Calcutta, which is one of the large metropolitan cities in India. There’s no shortage of vehicles on the roads there, and thanks to my Dad’s patient driving lessons, the skills I developed during the teenage years in India have certainly prepared me for a lot of challenging traffic situations almost anywhere in the world! My wife isn’t as involved with cars as I am, but I have certainly seen her interest grow over the years, and soon enough I will drag her to one of the Audi club events!
I am a Mechanical Engineer at Intel Corporation. I moved from New Mexico to Arizona in 2015 after a change of job assignments and have been loving it here ever since.
I drive a black 2016 S5 coupe with a manual transmission. This is the last production year for the manual transmission in Audi’s ‘S’ cars. I had to search long and hard to find the spec that matched my preferences, and I was super excited to have finally found this beauty. It brings a smile to my face every time I drive it, and I plan to keep it for a long while. As of today, the only modifications that I have done to the car are the wheels (upgraded them from 19″ to 20″) and the Audi puddle lights. I have a list of items planned, including some appearance upgrades (RS grill, CF diffuser and mirror caps, exhaust tips, red brake calipers) as well as performance upgrades (ECU tune, probably APR). Some of these I plan to do myself, and for the rest, I will probably rely on Lusso Motorsports and AZ Euros.
This is my second Audi. The first one was a 2013 S4, which was also a manual. I loved driving it, and I couldn’t think of selling it. When I did though, I promised myself that I would own the same generation of an S4/S5 soon after, which I finally did, after a painfully long search.
I have an aspiration to own a 2015 Audi R8 V8 or V10 manual coupe. These are rare vehicles to find (the V10 manual is even rarer), but with their timeless design and the glorious gated manual transmission, it will be quite the treasure to own. I have kept an active search on different car sites to alert me when one is available, and you never know, I might just take that giant plunge one day!
Cars have always been my center of interest since I was a child. KITT from the Knight Rider show was my dream car at the time, and even as an adult I wanted to restore a 1982 Pontiac Trans Am to revisit my childhood dream. The first time I was seriously interested in Audis was after watching Jason Statham drive an A8 in Transporter 2 & 3. This interest was refueled after seeing Robert Downey Jr. (aka Tony Stark) drive an R8 in the Avengers. I could not believe how cool those cars looked, and I just had to own one after that.
I learned about the club at a Cars and Coffee event at Scottsdale in 2019, thanks to Daniel Jerdon. After a few awesome test drives, I became an official member later that year.
My favorite Drive ‘n Dine destination was Arcosanti. Despite the ~1 mile gravel road that leads to it, I thought the place was really cool, and I would have never gone there had it not been for the Audi Club. Thank you!
What I like most about the club are the members. It is just so great to be amongst like-minded and friendly car enthusiasts who never get bored or tired of talking about cars. I feel so blessed to have found this group!
I would love to see an event to Monument Valley. I have seen so many pictures of that place, I just think it would be really cool to have a picture of our Audis on the road that leads to it. I have even planned to ask some members to spot for incoming traffic, while we pose with our cars in the center of the road with that gorgeous background. That would certainly make for an amazing desktop wallpaper!