Dennis O'Hare who won his Audi Driving Experience at Park Audi's Open House competition reports...

My wife, Sally, and I were lucky enough to win a trip with MSL Park Motors to enjoy driving an Audi of our choice in Germany recently.

We were flown to Munich and met by a chauffeur on arrival. We were then whisked up the autobahn in an A8 at 200km/h to our first night’s stay in Ingolstadt. The next morning we arrived early at the Audi Forum, to pick up our car and get a guided tour of the production line.

It is indeed an enormous facility employing 35,000 people and covering 200 hectares, making Audi by far the largest employer in the region. They even have their own dedicated Fire service and 12 full time doctors! We were shown to our car, an A4 Allroad 3.0i Quattro. This is one of the latest models to be introduced to the A4 range and our test car had some impressive technology on board including a fantastic integrated sat nav system.

Then we got a guided tour of the A3 production facility. This facility is so vast, there is an internal road of more than 2kms running the length of it! The tour took almost 2 hours to complete but was so interesting, it seemed to last just a few minutes. Right from the start of the process when the huge aluminium coils were unwound to begin the moulding process, through the manufacture of the shell using sophisticated robotic technology and onto the labour intensive internal fit-out, everything ran like clockwork. I can now personally vouch for the build quality of Audi cars.

It is worth mentioning the Audi museum, which celebrates more than 100 years of Audi technology and contains some exquisite examples of former models, including touring sedans from the 1930s.

We then got on the road for our weekend destination of Berchtesgaden, in the very south east corner of Germany, right on the border with Austria and about 30kms from Salzburg. It is a most picturesque part of Bavaria and our 5 star hotel was surrounded by high peaks on all sides. Needless to say, the view from the outdoor heated pool was spectacular, especially in early morning mists.

The car was a pleasure to drive, once I figured out how to start it! It was exhilarating to open up the throttle without worrying about white Gatso vans lying in wait. The natives are very tolerant drivers and I did not experience any hassle in over 700kms of driving.

We were treated very well wherever we went and the whole experience will live long in the memory. Our thanks to Finbar, Ali, Lynden and all the team at MSL Park Motors and Audi Ireland who organised everything for us.

Best Wishes

Dennis & Sally