title: ʻOumuamua

text: Oumuamua appears to have come from roughly the direction of Vega in the constellation Lyra. The incoming direction of motion of Oumuamua is 6° from the solar apex (the direction of the Sun's movement relative to local stars), which is the most likely direction from which objects coming from outside the Solar System should approach. On 26 October, two precovery observations from the Catalina Sky Survey were found dated 14 and 17 October. A two-week observation arc had verified a strongly hyperbolic trajectory. It has a hyperbolic excess velocity (velocity at infinity, formula_1) of , its speed relative to the Sun when in interstellar space.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: By mid-November, astronomers were certain that it was an interstellar object. Based on observations spanning 80 days, Oumuamua's orbital eccentricity is 1.20, the highest ever observed until 2I/Borisov was discovered in August 2019. An eccentricity exceeding 1.0 means an object exceeds the Sun's escape velocity, is not bound to the Solar System and may escape to interstellar space. While an eccentricity slightly above 1.0 can be obtained by encounters with planets, as happened with the previous record holder, C/1980 E1, Oumuamua's eccentricity is so high that it could not have been obtained through an encounter with any of the planets in the Solar System. Even undiscovered planets in the Solar System, if any should exist, could not account for Oumuamua's trajectory nor boost its speed to the observed value. For these reasons, Oumuamua can only be of interstellar origin.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: Oumuamua entered the Solar System from north of the plane of the ecliptic. The pull of the Sun's gravity caused it to speed up until it reached its maximum speed of as it passed south of the ecliptic on 6 September, where the sun's gravity bent its orbit in a sharp turn northward at its closest approach (perihelion) on 9 September at a distance of from the Sun, i.e., about 17% closer than Mercury's closest approach to the Sun. The object is now heading away from the Sun towards Pegasus towards a vanishing point 66° from the direction of its approach.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: On the outward leg of its journey through the Solar System, Oumuamua passed beyond the orbit of Earth on 14 October with a closest approach distance of approximately from Earth. On 16 October it moved back north of the ecliptic plane and passed beyond the orbit of Mars on 1 November. Oumuamua passed beyond Jupiter's orbit in May 2018, beyond Saturn's orbit in January 2019, and beyond Neptune's in 2022. As it leaves the Solar System it will be approximately right ascension 23'51" and declination +24°45', in Pegasus. It will continue to slow down until it reaches a speed of relative to the Sun, the same speed it had before its approach to the Solar System.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: On 27 June 2018, astronomers reported a non-gravitational acceleration to Oumuamua's trajectory, potentially consistent with a push from solar radiation pressure. The resulting change in velocity during the period when it was near its closest approach to the sun summed to about 17 meters per second. Initial speculation as to the cause of this acceleration pointed to the comet-like outgassing, whereby volatile substances inside the object evaporate as the Sun heats its surface. Although no such tail of gases was observed following the object, researchers estimated that enough outgassing may have increased the object's speed without the gases being detectable. A critical re-assessment of the outgassing hypothesis argued that, instead of the observed stability of Oumuamua's spin, outgassing would have caused its spin to rapidly change due to its elongated shape, resulting in the object tearing apart.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: Accounting for Vega's proper motion, it would have taken Oumuamua 600,000 years to reach the Solar System from Vega. But as a nearby star, Vega was not in the same part of the sky at that time. Astronomers calculate that one hundred years ago the object was from the Sun and traveling at 26.33 km/s with respect to the Sun. This interstellar speed is very close to the mean motion of material in the Milky Way in the neighborhood of the Sun, also known as the local standard of rest (LSR), and especially close to the mean motion of a relatively close group of red dwarf stars. This velocity profile also indicates an extrasolar origin, but appears to rule out the closest dozen stars. In fact, the closeness of Oumuamua's velocity to the local standard of rest might mean that it has circulated the Milky Way several times and thus may have originated from an entirely different part of the galaxy.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: It is unknown how long the object has been traveling among the stars. The Solar System is likely the first planetary system that Oumuamua has closely encountered since being ejected from its birth star system, potentially several billion years ago. It has been speculated that the object may have been ejected from a stellar system in one of the local kinematic associations of young stars (specifically, Carina or Columba) within a range of about 100 parsecs, some 45 million years ago. The Carina and Columba associations are now very far in the sky from the Lyra constellation, the direction from which Oumuamua came when it entered the Solar System. Others have speculated that it was ejected from a white dwarf system and that its volatiles were lost when its parent star became a red giant. About 1.3 million years ago the object may have passed within a distance of to the nearby star TYC 4742-1027-1, but its velocity is too high to have originated from that star system, and it probably just passed through the system's Oort cloud at a relative speed of about . A more recent study (August 2018) using Gaia Data Release 2 has updated the possible past close encounters and has identified four stars that Oumuamua passed relatively close to and at moderately low velocities in the past few million years.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: This study also identifies future close encounters of Oumuamua on its outgoing trajectory from the Sun.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: In September 2018, astronomers described several possible home star systems from which Oumuamua may have originated.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: In April 2020, astronomers presented a new possible scenario for the object's origin. According to one hypothesis, Oumuamua could be a fragment from a tidally disrupted planet. If true, this would make Oumuamua a rare object, of a type much less abundant than most extrasolar "dusty-snowball" comets or asteroids. However, this scenario leads to cigar-shaped objects whereas Oumuamua's lightcurve favors a disc-like shape.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: In May 2020, it was proposed that the object was the first observed member of a class of small H-ice-rich bodies that form at temperatures near 3 K in the cores of giant molecular clouds. The non-gravitational acceleration and high aspect ratio shape of Oumuamua might be explainable on this basis. However, it was later calculated that hydrogen icebergs cannot survive their journey through interstellar space.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: Initially, Oumuamua was announced as comet C/2017 U1 (PANSTARRS) based on a strongly hyperbolic trajectory. In an attempt to confirm any cometary activity, very deep stacked images were taken at the Very Large Telescope later the same day, but the object showed no presence of a coma. Accordingly, the object was renamed A/2017 U1, becoming the first comet ever to be re-designated as an asteroid. Once it was identified as an interstellar object, it was designated 1I/2017 U1, the first member of a new class of objects. The lack of a coma limits the amount of surface ice to a few square meters, and any volatiles (if they exist) must lie below a crust at least thick. It also indicates that the object must have formed within the frost line of its parent stellar system or have been in the inner region of that stellar system long enough for all near-surface ice to sublimate, as may be the case with damocloids. It is difficult to say which scenario is more likely due to the chaotic nature of small body dynamics, although if it formed in a similar manner to Solar System objects, its spectrum indicates that the latter scenario is true. Any meteoric activity from Oumuamua would have been expected to occur on 18 October 2017 coming from the constellation Sextans, but no activity was detected by the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: On 27 June 2018, astronomers reported that Oumuamua was thought to be a mildly active comet, and not an asteroid, as previously thought. This was determined by measuring a non-gravitational boost to Oumuamua's acceleration, consistent with comet outgassing. However, studies submitted in October 2018 suggest that the object is neither an asteroid nor a comet, although the object could be a remnant of a disintegrated interstellar comet (or exocomet), as suggested by astronomer Zdenek Sekanina.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: Spectra from the Hale Telescope on 25 October showed red color resembling comet nuclei or Trojans. Higher signal to noise spectra recorded by the William Herschel Telescope later that day showed that the object was featureless, and colored red like Kuiper belt objects. Spectra obtained with the Very Large Telescope the following night showed that behavior continued into near-infrared wavelengths. Its spectrum is similar to that of D-type asteroids.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: Oumuamua is not rotating around its principal axis, and its motion may be a form of tumbling. This accounts for the various rotation periods reported, such as 8.10 hours (±0.42 hours or ±0.02 hours) by Bannister et al. and Bolin et al. with a lightcurve amplitude of , whereas Meech et al. reported a rotation period of 7.3 hours and a lightcurve amplitude of 2.5 magnitudes. Most likely, Oumuamua was set tumbling by a collision in its system of origin, and remains tumbling since the time scale for dissipation of this motion is very long, at least a billion years.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: The large variations on the light curves indicate that Oumuamua may be anything from a highly elongated cigar-like object, comparable to or greater than the most elongated Solar System objects, to an extremely flat object, a pancake or oblate spheroid. However, the size and shape have not been directly observed as Oumuamua appears as nothing more than a point source of light even in the most powerful telescopes. Neither its albedo nor its triaxial ellipsoid shape is known. If cigar-shaped, the longest-to-shortest axis ratio could be 5:1 or greater. Assuming an albedo of 10% (slightly higher than typical for D-type asteroids) and a 6:1 ratio, Oumuamua has dimensions of approximately with an average diameter of about . According to astronomer David Jewitt, the object is physically unremarkable except for its highly elongated shape. Bannister et al. have suggested that it could also be a contact binary, although this may not be compatible with its rapid rotation. One speculation regarding its shape is that it is a result of a violent event (such as a collision or stellar explosion) that caused its ejection from its system of origin. JPL News reported that Oumuamua "is up to one-quarter mile (400 meters) long and highly-elongated — perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide".


title: ʻOumuamua

text: A 2019 paper finds the best models as either a cigar-shape, 1:8 aspect ratio, or disc-shape, 1:6 aspect ratio, with the disc more likely since its rotation does not require a specific orientation to see the range of brightnesses observed. Monte Carlo simulations based on the available orbit determination suggest that the equatorial obliquity of Oumuamua could be about 93 degrees, if it has a very prolate or cigar-like shape, or close to 16 degrees, if it is very oblate or disk-like. A 2021 paper found that the extreme shape was likely a result of recent evaporation, and that when the object entered the Solar System it likely had an unremarkable 2:1 aspect ratio. The authors calculated that a month after perihelion, that Oumuamua had lost 92% of the mass it had upon entering the Solar System.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: Light curve observations suggest the object may be composed of dense metal-rich rock that has been reddened by millions of years of exposure to cosmic rays. It is thought that its surface contains tholins, which are irradiated organic compounds that are more common in objects in the outer Solar System and can help determine the age of the surface. This possibility is inferred from spectroscopic characterization and its reddish color, and from the expected effects of interstellar radiation. Despite the lack of any cometary coma when it approached the Sun, it may still contain internal ice, hidden by "an insulating mantle produced by long-term cosmic ray exposure".


title: ʻOumuamua

text: In November 2019, some astronomers noted that Oumuamua may be a "cosmic dust bunny", due to its "very lightweight and 'fluffy' conglomerate of dust and ice grains".


title: ʻOumuamua

text: In August 2020, astronomers reported that ʻOumuamua is not likely to have been composed of frozen hydrogen, which had been proposed earlier; the compositional nature of the object continues to be unknown.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: In December 2017, astronomer Avi Loeb of Harvard University, an adviser to the Breakthrough Listen Project, cited Oumuamua's unusually elongated shape as one of the reasons why the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia would listen for radio emissions from it to see if there were any unexpected signs that it might be of artificial origin, although earlier limited observations by other radio telescopes such as the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array had produced no such results. On 13 December 2017, the Green Bank Telescope observed the object for six hours across four bands of radio frequency. No radio signals from Oumuamua were detected in this very limited scanning range, but more observations were planned.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: Outgassing of nitrogen ice (N) could explain why no outgassing was detected. Nitrogen ice the size of 'Oumuamua could survive for 500 million years in the interstellar medium and would reflect two-thirds of the Sun's light. This explanation has been further supported in March 2021 when scientists presented a theory based on nitrogen ice, and further concluded that Oumuamua may be a piece of an exoplanet similar to the dwarf planet Pluto, an exo-Pluto as noted, from beyond our solar system. This theory has been criticized by Loeb. In November 2021, theoretical studies by Siraj and Loeb hypothesized that 'Oumuamua was not a nitrogen iceberg.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: It has been proposed that ʻOumuamua contains a significant amount of hydrogen ice. This would point to it originating from the core of an interstellar molecular cloud, where conditions for the formation of this material might exist. The Sun's heat would cause the hydrogen to sublimate, which would in turn propel the body. The hydrogen coma formed by this process would be difficult to detect from Earth-based telescopes, as the atmosphere blocks those wavelengths. Regular water-ice comets undergo this as well, however to a much lesser extent and with a visible coma. This may explain the significant non-gravitational acceleration that ʻOumuamua underwent without showing signs of coma formation. Significant mass loss caused by the sublimation would also explain the unusual cigar-like shape, comparable to how a bar of soap becomes more elongated as it is used up.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: However, it was later shown that hydrogen icebergs cannot form out of small grains and that, to not evaporate during their journey in interstellar space, they would had to be formed about 40 millions years ago, in the close neighborhood of the solar system.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: The Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) launched Project Lyra to assess the feasibility of a mission to Oumuamua. Several options for sending a spacecraft to Oumuamua within a time-frame of 5 to 25 years were suggested. Different mission durations and their velocity requirements were explored with respect to the launch date, assuming direct impulsive transfer to the intercept trajectory.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: The Space Launch System (also being looked at for "interstellar precursor missions") would be even more capable. Such an interstellar precursor could easily pass by Oumuamua on its way out of the Solar System, at speeds of .


title: ʻOumuamua

text: More advanced options of using solar, laser electric, and laser sail propulsion, based on Breakthrough Starshot technology, have also been considered. The challenge is to get to the interstellar object in a reasonable amount of time (and so at a reasonable distance from Earth), and yet be able to gain useful scientific information. To do this, decelerating the spacecraft at Oumuamua would be "highly desirable, due to the minimal science return from a hyper-velocity encounter". If the investigative craft goes too fast, it would not be able to get into orbit or land on the object and would fly past it. The authors conclude that, although challenging, an encounter mission would be feasible using near-term technology. Seligman and Laughlin adopt a complementary approach to the Lyra study but also conclude that such missions, though challenging to mount, are both feasible and scientifically attractive.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: On 26 October 2018, Loeb and his postdoc Shmuel Bialy submitted a paper exploring the possibility of Oumuamua being an artificial thin solar sail accelerated by solar radiation pressure, in an effort to help explain the object's comet-like non-gravitational acceleration. Other scientists have stated that the available evidence is insufficient to consider such a premise, and that a tumbling solar sail would not be able to accelerate. In response, Loeb wrote an article detailing six anomalous properties of Oumuamua that make it unusual, unlike any comets or asteroids seen before. A subsequent report on observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope set a tight limit on cometary outgassing of any carbon-based molecules and indicated that Oumuamua is at least ten times more shiny than a typical comet. The solar sail technosignature hypothesis is considered unlikely by many experts owing to available simpler explanations that align with the expected characteristics of interstellar asteroids and comets.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: 2I/Borisov was discovered on 30 August 2019, and was soon confirmed to be an interstellar comet. Arriving from the direction of Cassiopeia, the object arrived at perihelion (closest point to the Sun) on 8 December 2019.


title: ʻOumuamua

text: Oumuamua is possibly the third interstellar object known; the first and second being purported interstellar meteors CNEOS 2014-01-08 and CNEOS 2017-03-09 that impacted Earth in 2014 and 2017, respectively.


title: Audi A6

text: The Audi A6 is an executive car made by the German automaker Audi. Now in its fifth generation, the successor to the Audi 100 is manufactured in Neckarsulm, Germany, and is available in saloon and estate configurations, the latter marketed by Audi as the "Avant". Audi's internal numbering treats the A6 as a continuation of the Audi 100 lineage, with the initial A6 designated as a member of the C4-series, followed by the C5, C6, C7, and the C8. The related Audi A7 is essentially a Sportback (liftback) version of the C7-series and C8-series A6 but is marketed under its own separate identity and model designation.


title: Audi A6

text: All generations of the A6 have offered either front-wheel-drive or Torsen-based four-wheel-drive, marketed by Audi as their "quattro" system. The A6 has also been used as the basis for the company's Allroad models since 1999.


title: Audi A6

text: Both petrol and diesel versions of the A6 are offered. The wide range of engines available have power outputs ranging from . These are inline four-cylinder turbocharged engines and more powerful 3-litre units in a V6 configuration with a mechanical compressor.


title: Audi A6

text: Audi's executive car was previously named the Audi 100 (or Audi 5000 in the United States), and was released in three successive generations (Audi C1, Audi C2 and Audi C3). In 1994, the latest generation (C4) of the Audi 100 received a facelift and was renamed as the Audi A6, to fit in with Audi's new alphanumeric nomenclature (as the full-size A8 had just been introduced). The exterior was changed only slightly from the "C4" Audi 100 – new front and rear lights, new radiator grille, similarly with chassis and engine and transmission choices. The United Kingdom was the first market to receive the A6, as stock of RHD Audi 100s had run out before expected, and before the rest of mainland Europe.


title: Audi A6

text: The new engines for the A6 were 1.8-litre 20v inline four-cylinder, 2.0-litre 8v inline four-cylinder, 2.6-litre 12V V6 and 2.8-litre 30v V6 petrol engines, with the 2.3-litre inline five engine being dropped on most markets. For the diesel engines, an inline four 1.9 Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI), and the inline five (R5) 2.5 TDI () were available.


title: Audi A6

text: Until 1997, the A6 came with several different engines, two of them turbodiesel, and most of them available with Audi's Torsen-based quattro permanent four-wheel-drive system. The A6 was available with saloon and Avant bodies.


title: Audi A6

text: Upon introducing the C4 series A6, Audi made small revisions to what was previously known as the Audi S4, renaming it the Audi S6; the S4 name would eventually be re-used for a completely different model derived from Audi's smaller Volkswagen Group B platform-based Audi A4. As this was the first S6 model from Audi, it is commonly referred to as the "Ur-S6", derived from the German augmentative, "Ursprünglich" (meaning: original). It was available as both a saloon/sedan ("type" 4A5), and an "Avant" ("type" 4A9) (estate/wagon) to European and United States customers, but only as a saloon in Canada, Asia and Australia.


title: Audi A6

text: From its launch in late 1994, the Audi S6 was powered by a turbocharged inline five-cylinder petrol engine (parts code prefix: 034, identification code: AAN) with a Bosch Motronic electronic engine control unit (ECU), producing a motive power output of at 5,900 rpm and at around 1,950 rpm, on high octane "Super Plus" 98RON unleaded petrol. This engine gave the S6 a top speed of , and allowed it to accelerate from 0 to in 6.7 seconds; with being reached in 17.5 seconds. The vehicle was available with a standard six-speed manual transmission (five-speed only in North America), and Audi's dynamic Torsen T-1 Quattro permanent four-wheel-drive system.


title: Audi A6

text: Audi made a high-performance, 4.2-litre V8 engine (parts code prefix: 077, identification code: AEC) with a Bosch KE-Motronic ECU available as an option in the original European S4s, and made the decision to continue to do so with the S6, making a version of the 4.2 available as an optional upgrade over the 2.2-litre inline five-cylinder turbo. Unlike the five-cylinder turbocharged version, the V8-powered S6 was supplied with a four-speed automatic transmission as standard but kept the Quattro four-wheel-drive. A six-speed manual gearbox was also available as an option.


title: Audi A6

text: As a swan song to the C4 platform, an even more powerful, and very limited-production Audi S6 Plus was briefly available to European customers. The S6 Plus, developed by Audi's wholly owned high-performance subsidiary, quattro GmbH, was available for sale during the 1997 model year only (production from June 1996 to October 1997). A total of 952 cars were produced; 855 Avants and 97 saloons.


title: Audi A6

text: It was powered by another version of the 32-valve (four valves per cylinder) 4.2-litre V8 engine (parts code prefix: 077, identification code: AHK, later to be seen in the Audi S8 as AKH). Audi's performance division reworked key parts of the engine, increasing the maximum power to . It was only available with a revised six-speed manual transmission (parts code prefix: 01E, identification code: DGU) (gear ratios – 1st: 3.500, 2nd: 1.889, 3rd: 1.320, 4th: 1.034, 5th: 0.857, 6th: 0.730), with a final drive ratio of 4.111.


title: Audi A6

text: Further revisions were made to the suspension, brakes, and wheels. The front brake discs were enlarged to in diameter by thick. Standard wheels were 8Jx17 "Avus" cast aluminium alloy wheels, with an optional 7Jx16 alloy wheel for use with winter tyres was also available.


title: Audi A6

text: With so much power on tap, the S6 Plus saloon could reach from a standstill in 5.6 seconds, with the Avant a tenth of a second slower at 5.7 seconds.


title: Audi A6

text: In February 1997, the introduction of a new A6 ("Typ" 4B), based on a new design automobile platform – the Volkswagen Group C5 platform, with a new range of engines was announced and appeared in March at the 1997 Geneva Motor Show. This A6 was marketed in the same categories as the BMW 5 Series and the Mercedes-Benz E-Class. The redesigned body had a coefficient of drag of 0.28.


title: Audi A6

text: In 2000 and 2001, the "C5" A6 was on "Car and Driver" magazine's "Ten Best" list. This A6 was available with a 30-valve 2.4- and 2.8-litre V6 engines, with a numerous other engine configurations available globally. As an alternative to the manual transmission, a five-speed tiptronic automatic transmission was also available.


title: Audi A6

text: The C5 saloon variant arrived in mid-1997 in Europe, late 1997 in North America and Australia, and the Avant in 1998. In Canada, there was no Avant (Audi's name for an estate/wagon) available at all in 1998 – Audi dropped the C4 Avant at the end of the 1997 model year, and jumped straight to the C5 Avant in 1998 in conjunction with its release in the US. As a result of complying with FMVSS, the North American models were equipped with front and rear bumpers that protruded several inches further than their European counterparts, with modified brackets and bumper suspension assemblies as result, and child-seat tethers for occupant safety. In compliance with Canadian law, Canadian models received daytime running lights as standard equipment. North American C5 A6 models received the 2.8-litre, 30-valve V6 engine, the 2.7-litre "Biturbo" V6 (also found in the B5 platform S4, ), and the 4.2-litre 40-valve V8 petrol engine (); the two higher-spec. engines were only offered with quattro permanent four-wheel drive. The V8 models arrived with significantly altered exterior body panels, with slightly more flared wheel arches (fenders), revised headlamps and grille design (before being introduced in 2002 to all other A6 models), larger wheels (8Jx17-inch), larger brakes and Torsen-based Quattro permanent four-wheel-drive as standard.


title: Audi A6

text: In 2002, the A6 received a facelift, with revised headlight and grille design, exposed exhaust tips, and slight changes to accessory body moldings, and tail light colour from red to amber in North American models. A new host of engines were also introduced. The 1.8-litre engine was deleted and replaced by a 2.0-litre powerplant with . The 1.9-litre Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI) was tweaked to produce a maximum power output of , and of torque, and was mated to a six-speed manual gearbox. The 2.4-litre V6 was named the BDV 30 valves and gained an extra 5 hp and better balancing, and the 2.8-litre V6 engine was replaced by a 3.0-litre engine with . The turbocharged 2.7-litre was revised, resulting in and , controlled by standard quattro system. The V6 diesel was also slightly modified resulting in (after the second modification) and . A new more powerful V6 diesel was also introduced with and . The 4.2-litre V8 engine which arrived in 2001 remained unchanged.


title: Audi A6

text: Also new was the multitronic continuously variable transmission, available in most front-wheel drive models. All models, except the 2.0-litre petrol and 1.9-litre TDI, were available with Audi's trademark four-wheel-drive system, Quattro. A four-wheel-drive version of the Avant, with raised ground clearance and slightly altered styling, was sold as the Audi allroad quattro, Audi's first crossover SUV.


title: Audi A6

text: The second-generation A6 was on "Car and Driver" magazine's Ten Best list for 2000 and 2001. The updated 2005 A6 won the "World Car of the Year" award for 2005. In addition, the facelifted third-generation A6 3.0T won two "Car and Driver" "comparos" that pitted it against other sedans like the BMW 5 Series, Mercedes-Benz E-Class, Jaguar XF, and Infiniti M.


title: Audi A6

text: The Audi S6 was a high-powered variant of the A6, featuring a modified version of the 4.2-litre V8 engine producing and . It was available as a saloon and Avant although the Avant version was the only one sold in North America.


title: Audi A6

text: In the late years of the A6 C5 design, an ultra-high-performance limited-run Audi RS 6 model was presented. Weighing in excess of and producing and , the RS 6 was capable of 0- in 4.5 seconds, and on to in under 17 seconds. Initially available as only an Avant, a saloon variant was later added; the saloon version being the only version available to the North American market. The RS 6 saloon finished first in a May 2003 "Car and Driver" comparison test against the BMW M5 (E39), Mercedes-Benz E 55 AMG (W210), and Jaguar S-Type R. A long wheelbase version of the A6 C5 was available in China for the first time, making this model the first German lwb sedan ever sold in the country.


title: Audi A6

text: Audi's C5 series A6 Avant formed the basis for a semi-offroad model in 1999, labeled "Audi allroad Quattro". Compared to the regular A6, the allroad featured an advanced air suspension system, allowing for increased ground clearance; larger diameter all-terrain tyres, and flared fenders and bumpers with matte finish, giving it a distinct appearance and more overall flexibility over varying terrain. The allroad's ride height was also increased with 25mm subframe spacers; and overall frame stiffness increased with reinforced welds on the subframe mounts and A, B, and C pillars, the floor pan being produced with 20% thicker steel. As the name "allroad Quattro" suggests, Audi's Torsen-based quattro permanent four-wheel-drive system was standard equipment for all versions.


title: Audi A6

text: The standard adjustable air suspension system can lift the car high enough to provide of ground clearance; a low-range mode (an option with manual transmission), absent from other Quattro-equipped vehicles, can be selected with the touch of a button. When used together, the two systems made it possible for the allroad to complete an official Land Rover test-course, thus far it is the only car-based SUV that has been proven capable of doing so in testing. Conversely, the air suspension can lower the vehicle down to only above road level, and simultaneously stiffen the spring and damper rates to provide a sporty driving experience, much like that of the conventional A6 with the sports suspension.


title: Audi A6

text: Audi's 2.7-litre, biturbo V6 petrol engine with and of peak torque was available initially, alongside the 2.5-litre TDI diesel unit with and of torque. A variant of the corporate 4.2-litre V8 petrol engine, was made available in 2003, and a less powerful TDI (163 bhp) followed in 2004.


title: Audi A6

text: Audi stopped production of the allroad in July 2005. Although the model continued to be available for sale throughout 2006 in Europe, there was no 2006 model year for North America.


title: Audi A6

text: With the return of the "allroad" nameplate to North America, in the form of the 2013 A4 allroad Quattro, the C5-Platform allroad Quattro has begun to take the name "Ur-allroad." The 'Ur-' is used in the German language, as a prefix to signify 'ancient' or 'early ancestor' (e.g., great-grandmother is Urgroßmutter), and is used informally by car enthusiasts worldwide to refer to the "original" Audi Quattro that was produced from 1980 to 1991 (the "Ur-Quattro"). The use of the term was then extended to the original S4 and S6 models to differentiate them from later models with the same name, and more recently to the C5 allroad models ("Ur-allroad").


title: Audi A6

text: The "Typ" 4F A6 was released in 2004. Designed by Satoshi Wada in 2001, this model is visually an evolution of the C5, but was lengthened to , and has the new Audi "single-frame grille". Like other contemporary Audis, the A6 has a "tornado line" that runs from the front lights to the rear lights just below the body shoulders.


title: Audi A6

text: The C6 iteration of the A6 features more sophisticated technology. Most notable is the Multi Media Interface (MMI), which is a system controlling in-car entertainment, satellite navigation, climate control, car settings such as suspension configuration and optional electronic accessories through a central screen interface. This has the advantage of minimising the wealth of buttons normally found on a dashboard by replacing them with controls that operate multiple devices using the integrated display.


title: Audi A6

text: On the engines, the new Fuel Stratified Injection (FSI) direct injection technology was introduced. Although the line of engines represents the same progression as the former model, all engines were new. The multitronic continuously variable transmission continues as an alternative for front-wheel-drive models, alongside a new six-speed tiptronic automatic transmission model 0AW available in the four-wheel-drive models. Audi's "trademark" Torsen-based Quattro permanent four-wheel-drive is available in most of the lineup, and standard in the most powerful models. Quattro is "not" available on the Multitronic variants of the A6, but is available on the manual and Tiptronic gear systems. Conversely, the Tiptronic system is not available on the front-wheel-drive variants of the car. The six-speed manual gearbox is available with the 3.2-litre V6 engine, but not for the North American market.


title: Audi A6

text: The Avant was previewed by the Audi Avantissimo concept in 2001 and arrived during the course of 2005. The A6 All-road Quattro made its debut in 2006, and as before, is an off-road-ready version of the Avant, available with either a 2.7-litre V6 or 3.0-litre V6 Turbocharged Direct Injection diesel engines, or a 3.2-litre V6 or 4.2-litre V8 petrol engine.


title: Audi A6

text: This is a long wheelbase version of the A6 sedan for the Chinese market. The vehicle was unveiled in 2005 at the Shanghai Motor Show.


title: Audi A6

text: The vehicles went on sale in the middle of 2005. Early models include A6L 2.4, with A6L 2.0 TFSI (170 PS) followed shortly after. A6L 3.0 Quattro (218 PS) and A6L 4.2 Quattro (335 PS) were introduced in 2005. Other models include A6 3.0.


title: Audi A6

text: The Audi S6 performance variant was introduced in the Frankfurt Motor Show, and produced from early 2006 until 2011. It is powered by a 5.2-litre Fuel Stratified Injection (FSI) V10 engine producing and of torque. The S6 reaches from a standstill in 5.2 seconds and a quarter mile in 13.5 seconds.


title: Audi A6

text: Audi announced the C6 series allroad in the spring of 2005 and released it in the summer of 2006. This model was called the Audi A6 allroad Quattro (unlike the previous version, which was merely called "Audi allroad Quattro", with no reference to the A6 nomenclature).


title: Audi A6

text: The Audi A6 allroad quattro again featured adaptive air suspension and quattro permanent four-wheel drive system. The A6 allroad was powered by a choice of two Fuel Stratified Injection (FSI) petrol engines, a 3.2-litre V6 and a 4.2-litre V8, and two TDI diesel engines, a 2.7 L and a (233 only in the US) 3.0 L. The tiptronic gearbox is standard on the 4.2 V8 and the 2.7 TDI, but optional on the 3.2 FSI and 3.0 TDI.


title: Audi A6

text: The 6-speed "Tiptronic" automatic transmission system converted high-torque engine power into both sporty performance and operating convenience, with crisp, fast gear changes. Advanced electronics respond efficiently to all driver input in both D (Drive) and S (Sport) programmes, helping to prevent unwanted upshifts when cornering. The five-mode air suspension can be raised by up to to provide ground clearance of which is better than the older four-mode.


title: Audi A6

text: In some European markets, this A6 allroad Quattro was more expensive than the larger Audi Q7, but an air suspension is an expensive option in the Q7. In its native country, Germany, it cost a few hundred Euros less than the Q7.


title: Audi A6

text: In 2005, the A6 won the "World Car of the Year" award, and has also won the "Practical Caravan" "Towcar of the Year" awards, due to its array of towing features such as adjustable suspension height and damping, and the presence of a 123 Trailer Stability Programme.


title: Audi A6

text: Audi unveiled a facelifted "C6" Audi A6 on 12 August 2008, at the Moscow International Motor Show. The refresh incorporates some modern Audi design cues to keep the A6 current with the rest of the Audi lineup.


title: Audi A6

text: There are minor cosmetic changes to the front and rear lights which now have daytime running LEDs, the taillights extend towards the center of the trunk lid and pinch off at the license plate mount, however, their shape remains rectangular compared to the more sculpted light clusters found in the 2008 Audi A5, 2008 Audi A4, and 2009 Audi Q5 (the latter three being all-new generations).


title: Audi A6

text: The intakes below the headlamps are inspired by the Audi RS5. The A6's six (per side) front light-emitting diode (LED) daytime running lights (DRLs) are located within the main headlamp housing, similar to RS6's placement of the LEDs (ten per side), whereas on the S6 these front LEDs (five per side) are found adjacent to the fog lamps in the lower front bumper.


title: Audi A6

text: There are now six petrol and four diesel engines available for the upgraded A6. All petrol engines now feature cylinder-direct Fuel Stratified Injection (FSI) technology, and all diesel engines now feature common rail (CR) and Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI) technologies. There is a new petrol engine, a 3.0L supercharged V6, badged as 3.0 TFSI or 3.0T. This new engine is shared with the B8-generation Audi S4 and S5, although slightly detuned vs. the S-cars, and makes the A6 3.0T only 0.1s slower 0- than the more powerful but heavier 4.2L V8 variant and 5.2L V10-bearing S6.


title: Audi A6

text: Also updated for 2009 is the Quattro all-wheel-drive setup, which is already found on the 2008 Audi A5 and 2008 Audi A4. This new system features a 40/60 front-to-rear torque split and offers a more balanced feel, reducing the understeer that comes from 50/50 AWD platforms.


title: Audi A6

text: US models went on sale as 2009 model year vehicles, and arrived in U.S. dealerships by the beginning of January. Early models include A6 3.2 FSI (sedan), A6 3.0 TFSI quattro (sedan/Avant), A6 4.2 FSI quattro (sedan), S6 5.2 FSI (sedan).


title: Audi A6

text: The latest version of ultra-high-performance Audi RS6 was launched in September 2008 and produced until the third quarter of 2010. Based upon the V10 engine powering the S6, the RS6 features an all-aluminium alloy V10 twin-turbocharged, Fuel Stratified Injection engine with a dry sump lubrication system. It produces a power output of , and of torque, making it the most powerful vehicle ever produced by Audi at the time. This has now been surpassed by the Audi R8.


title: Audi A6

text: The A6L is a longer wheelbase version of the A6 sedan for the Chinese market. The vehicle was unveiled at Auto Shanghai 2009. Early models included the 2.7 TDI powerplant (189 PS).


title: Audi A6

text: The Audi A6L was also converted into the form of a pickup truck although only two examples are known to exist on the roads.


title: Audi A6

text: The fourth generation C7 series Audi A6 (internally designated Typ 4G) was launched in early 2011 for the European market and in other markets soon after. It is heavily influenced by the Audi A8 (D4), pulling elements from its exterior details. The A6 shares its interior, platform, and powertrain (Modular Longitudinal Platform) with the Audi A7 four door sedan, which had been released shortly before also in 2011. Compared to the A8 and A7, the A6 has the most aggressive front fascia and LED headlights (optional full LED headlamps). Design work began in 2006, with Jurgen Loffler's exterior design being chosen in 2008.


title: Audi A6

text: The new A6 increased its wheelbase by nearly and its width by . The redesign also decreased the car's drag coefficient to 0.25.


title: Audi A6

text: European engine choices for the C7 include two petrol engines – a 2.8-litre FSI V6 with and a , 3.0-litre supercharged FSI engine – and two diesel engines – a 2.0-litre inline four-cylinder and a 3.0-litre turbocharged diesel engine in three states of tune. The European A6 3.0 TFSI will have an optional seven-speed dual-clutch transmission and an air suspension option, two features that will not be available on the United States model.


title: Audi A6

text: For North America, the Audi A6 3.0 TFSI quattro will be powered by a 3.0-litre supercharged V6 putting out and , the same engine carried over from the previous-generation A6 3.0 TFSI, but in a higher state of tune and mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission. There is also an Audi A6 2.0 TFSI quattro powered by a 2.0-litre turbocharged inline-four, the same engine in the Audi A4 and Q5, mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission. For the United States but not the Canadian market, there will be an entry-level Audi A6 2.0 TFSI FrontTrak (front-wheel drive) with a 2.0-litre turbocharged inline-four, the same engine in the Audi A4 and Q5, but mated to the Multitronic CVT (continuous variable transmission).


title: Audi A6

text: The 2012 model year A6 features all the driver assistance systems from the A8, plus it adds automotive head-up display, active lane assist. Full LED headlamps with Automatic high beam switching or Audi adaptive light (Xenon) with variable headlight range control.


title: Audi A6

text: Audi unveiled the 2015 C7 mid-life facelift at the 2014 Paris Motor Show. The refresh includes styling tweaks to the car's exterior, engine line-up, transmission and MMI infotainment system with faster Tegra 3 processor, Handwriting recognition, Audi connect Telematics with state of the art 4G mobile internet (and online updates for the navigation map), and advanced Matrix LED headlights.


title: Audi A6

text: All three TFSI 1.8tfsi and five TDI engines now meet the Euro 6 emission standard. The new TDI Ultra model now comes with glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) springs and both ultra models now come with S-Tronic (dual-clutch) transmission. The entry-level Audi A6 2.0 TFSI FrontTrak (front-wheel drive) with a 2.0-litre turbocharged inline-four, received a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic that replaced the previous Multitronic CVT (continuously variable transmission).


title: Audi A6

text: A hybrid electric variant was also available for the first time in the A6, offering a 2-litre TFSI engine combined with a electric motor. Electric power is supplied via a 1.3 kWh lithium-ion battery, with electric-only range of 3 km for constant drive and a top speed of .


title: Audi A6

text: The market launch of the A6 Hybrid was scheduled for 2012. However, production of the US model was delayed.


title: Audi A6

text: The 2013 A6 allroad Quattro was unveiled at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show, alongside the 2012 RS4 Avant. Sales began in 2012. The first UK deliveries arrived in July 2012.


title: Audi A6

text: The allroad variant contains several unique features. Audi designed more than 1,100 new, unique parts for the allroad, setting it apart from the standard A6 and making it a true all-terrain vehicle. Most obvious, the allroad received special bumpers and fender flares, giving it an aggressive offroad appearance. The bumpers and fender flares feature a tough-wearing, matte finish, contrasting the rest of the body. The roof received this same coating, as well as four longitudinal ribs for increased strength. The unique bumpers also have integrated aluminum skid plates. The allroad featured larger diameter tires than the standard A6 for improved offroad capabilities. Redesigned headlights, larger side mirrors, and a lack of door "rub strips" are unique to the allroad.


title: Audi A6

text: The allroad comes standard with an adjustable air suspension system can lift the car high enough to provide of ground clearance; a low-range mode (an option with manual transmission), absent from other quattro-equipped vehicles, can be selected with the touch of a button. When used together, the two systems made it possible for the allroad to complete an official Land Rover test-course, thus far it is the only car-based SUV that has been proven capable of doing so in testing.


title: Audi A6

text: Conversely, the air suspension can lower the vehicle down to only above road level, and simultaneously stiffen the spring and damper rates to provide a sporty driving experience, much like that of the conventional A6 with the sports suspension.


title: Audi A6

text: It went on sale in spring 2012. Early variants included 3.0 TFSI quattro (310 PS), 3.0 TDI quattro (204 PS), 3.0 TDI quattro (245 PS), 3.0 TDI quattro (313 PS).


title: Audi A6

text: The A6 L (built in China for the Chinese market as a long wheelbase alternative to the standard A6) was unveiled in 2012 in Guangzhou International Sports Arena. Early models include A6 L TFSI, A6 L 30 FSI, A6 L 35 FSI, A6 L 35 FSI quattro, A6 L 50 TFSI quattro.


title: Audi A6

text: Available as the S6 saloon and S6 Avant, they included twin-turbo V8 engine rated at 5500–6400 rpm and at 1450–5250 rpm, recuperation and start-stop systems, cylinder deactivation, Active Noise Cancellation system, seven-speed S tronic transmission, quattro permanent all-wheel drive system with a self-locking center differential and torque vectoring (optional sport differential), adaptive air suspension lowers the body by , internally ventilated brake discs (optional carbon fiber-ceramic discs), matte black calipers with S6 logos, 8.5Jx19-inch cast aluminum wheels in a unique five parallel-spoke design (optional seven different 19- or 20-inch wheels (four from quattro GmbH), including 20-inch titanium-look wheels with a five-arm rotor design), 255/40-series tires, Audi drive select driving dynamics system, optional dynamic steering, single-frame grille with aluminum applications and chromed horizontal double bars, exterior mirrors feature aluminum-look housings, S6 sedan with spoiler on the trunk (S6 Avant has a roof spoiler), diffuser on the rear bumper in platinum gray with an aluminum-look offset edge, four elliptical chrome-tipped tailpipes, choice of eight body colors (including exclusive shades Estoril Blue, crystal effect and Prism Silver, crystal effect), body decorated with S6 and V8T badges, leather sport steering wheel with colored stitching, footrest and pedals and soft keys of the MMI operating system in an aluminum-look finish, decorative inlays in matt brushed aluminum (optional carbon, fine grain ash natural brown, layered Beaufort oak), choice of 3 colours for headlining, instrument panel, carpet and seats (black, lunar silver and goa beige (only for the seat upholstery)); Pearl Nappa leather and Alcantara seat upholstery (optional Milano and Valcona leather), height-adjustable sport seats with power lumbar supports and embossed S logos (optional power-adjustable comfort seats with memory function, power-adjustable S sport seats with integrated head restraints).


title: Audi A6

text: Other options include xenon plus headlights with an all-weather light, LED rear lights, an electromechanical parking brake, driver information system with color display, MMI radio plus includes a Bluetooth interface, Audi sound system with ten speakers, MMI navigation plus (hard drive, an eight-inch monitor, MMI touch input system), 15-speaker Bang & Olufsen Advanced Sound System.


title: Audi A6

text: It is a plug-in hybrid version of A6 L with 2.0 TFSI engine combined with a electric motor. Electric power is supplied via a 14.1 kWh lithium-ion battery, with all-electric range of for constant drive. Other features include MMI navigation plus developed in Audi Infotainment Tech Center (ITC) in Beijing.


title: Audi A6

text: The series production plug-in hybrid car will be available in China in 2016 on the long-wheelbase version, using the same hybrid vehicle powertrain like the concept vehicle. It has a power output of , with maximum torque. All-electric range will be . Acceleration from 0– takes 8.4 seconds. Fuel consumption will be .


title: Audi A6

text: Available in Saloon and Avant bodies, they are versions of A6 S line with 177 PS 2.0-litre TDI or higher engines (excluding S6) in front-wheel-drive or Quattro all-wheel-drive configurations, for the UK market. It included 20-inch rotor-design alloy wheels with a dark titanium finish, black grille, number plate surrounds and window frame strips, and privacy glass extending from the B-pillar rearwards; black roof rails, Piano Black inlays, sports seats upholstered in black Valcona leather, black headlining, BOSE audio system with DAB radio, Audi Music Interface (AMI) for iPod connection.


title: Audi A6

text: It is a version of S6 Avant with increased engine power to at 5700–6700 rpm and at 1750–5500 rpm, cylinder on demand system deactivates intake and exhaust valves of 4 cylinders (2, 3, 5 and 8), eight-speed tiptronic transmission with shortened shift times and D and S driving modes, quattro permanent all-wheel drive system with torque vectoring with self-locking center differential with an elevated locking value and oil cooler, adaptive air suspension lowering body by (optional tauter sport suspension plus with Dynamic Ride Control), option is dynamic steering, four internally vented diameter brake discs in wave design with a wave-like outer contour (optional diameter carbon fiber-ceramic brake discs with anthracite gray calipers), black six-piston brake calipers (optional red brake calipers), electronic stabilization control with Sport and off modes, high-gloss 20-inch forged wheels in a seven twin-spoke design (optional 21-inch cast wheels in high-gloss silver, polished black or polished titanium-look), matte aluminum applications on the body, high-gloss black protective grille at the front of the car, the bumpers, the fender, sill flares and the large roof spoiler; rear diffuser with two large elliptical exhaust tailpipes, a choice of 9 body colours (including exclusive shade Daytona Gray matte), dial instruments feature black faces and white dials and red needles, flat-bottomed three-spoke multifunction steering wheel, illuminated entry sills, driver information system (DIS) sport RS logos, RS6-specific driver information system, footrest and pedals and switches in the MMI navigation plus terminal in aluminum finish, decorative bezel surrounding the retractable monitor in a piano finish, interior door openers in a delicate double-bar design, standard Carbon inlays (with six additional materials as options), standard black headlining (optional Silver or black Alcantara), RS sport seats with side bolsters and integrated head restraints and RS6 logos upholstered in black Alcantara and leather with diamond quilting at center sections (optional honeycomb-quilted Valcona leather in either black or Moon Silver), optional power-adjustable deluxe seats with memory function, two sportily molded rear seats (optional three-person bench seat), xenon plus headlights, LED rear lights, a tire-pressure control system, illuminated entry sills, custom driver-information system, parking system plus, cruise control, three-zone automatic air conditioning, MMI navigation plus with MMI touch and the 10-speaker Audi sound system.


title: Audi A6

text: Optional packages includes customized quattro badges on the central front air inlet. Carbon appearance package includes alternate front splitter and diffuser shapes. Optional Dynamic package increases top speed to . Optional Dynamic plus package increases top speed to . Other options include LED headlights with a unique design, the sport differential on the rear axle, Comfort package, head-up display, the high-performance driver assistance systems, Bang & Olufsen Advanced Sound System with 15 speakers and 1,200 watts of total power, Bluetooth online car phone.


title: Audi A6

text: In the US, Canada, UK A6 Saloon with 3.0 TFSI Quattro (310 PS) replaced the A6 3.0 TFSI Quattro (300 PS).


title: Audi A6

text: For A6 Saloon 3.0 TFSI Quattro (310 PS), 7-speed S-Tronic is used in the UK model, 8-speed Tiptronic is used in the US, Canada models.


title: Audi A6

text: As part of the Audi A6 Avant launch in the UK, BBH London, Knucklehead, The Whitehouse, The Mill produced the 'Hummingbird' TV commercial, directed by Daniel Barber. The commercial premiered during the ITV1's coverage of the Rugby World Cup. The commercial was to imagine what a bird designed by Audi would look like and to reflect the car's ultra-lightweight technology. Johann Strauss's 'Open Road, Open Sky' was sung by legendary American baritone and automobile lover John Charles Thomas. In addition, 60 second and 30 versions of the ads were supported by press, print and radio campaigns, as well as a presence on the Daily Telegraph's iPad app.


title: Audi A6

text: As part of Audi A6 launch in Taiwan, 2011 Audi Fashion Festival featured the theme of 'A6- The sum of Progress', including Shiatzy Chen, Kiki Huang, Robyn Hung and an artistic jewelry brand, Chen Chan.


title: Audi A6

text: As part of 2013 Audi S6 sedan launch in the US market, 3 different versions of 'Prom' commercial were premiered during 2013 Super Bowl game. The 60-second ad, created by Venables Bell & Partners, features a teenage boy. Voters were to decide their favourite version of the commercial 24 hours on Friday before the Super Bowl game, with winning entry shown on Saturday at Audi's YouTube channel and during the actual game at CBS.


title: Audi A6

text: As part of RS6 Avant launch, Audi Land of Quattro Alpen Tour 2013 featured RS6 Avant begins on September 23, travelling across twelve driving stages in 6 countries (Klagenfurt – the capital of Carinthia, Austria, Monaco).


title: Audi A6

text: In the Audi RS6 Avant TV commercial titled 'Perfect Fit', it featured a 2012 Audi R18 with the high downforce sprint bodywork in the guise of Audi R18 e-tron quattro.


title: Audi A6

text: The new A6 was unveiled ahead of the 2018 Geneva Motor Show, and went on sale in June 2018. All engines are offered with a mild hybrid drivetrain that can reduce fuel consumption by up to 0.7 litres per 100 kilometres for the V6-engined vehicles. The A6 will be offered in 7 new exterior colors and 7 colors which are available in current models.


title: Audi A6

text: The fifth generation of the A6 is also available as an 'Avant' (Audi terminology for a station wagon). High-performance variants of the 'Avant' will also be produced, with the S6 Avant arriving in 2019 alongside the RS6 Avant.


title: Audi A6

text: It is a version of A6 with 40:60 front and rear axle all-wheel drive, wheel-selective torque control, damping control (optional adaptive air suspension), lowered body by (with air suspension, auto mode lowers body by further ), optional sport differential, electronic chassis platform with 5 drive select modes, front and rear brake discs with black (optional red) aluminium calipers (optional six-piston ceramic brake system includes front and rear brake discs), 20-inch wheels (optional 21-inch wheels), 255/40 tires (optional 20-inch Performance tires), sport seats with embossed S logo (optional integrated head restraints, embossed S logo and rhombus pattern) with optional ventilation and massage, Alcantara (optional Valcona) seat upholstery in colors black, rotor gray or arras red with contrasting stitching; aluminum inlays (optional fine grain ash), optional flat-bottomed rim steering wheel, stainless steel footrest and pedal caps, illuminated aluminum sill trims with S logo.


title: Audi A6

text: European models went on sale in summer 2019. Early United States, Asia and Middle East models include 2.9 TFSI.


title: Audi A6

text: 20 years allroad includes a choice of 3 body colours (gavial green, glacier white, Soho brown), 19-inch wheels in exclusive design, black sport seats with leather/Alcantara upholstery, aluminum inlays and illuminated door sill trims.


title: Audi A6

text: It is a version of A6 Avant with wider body on each side with flared wheel arches, front headlights from Audi A7, optional RS-specific Matrix LED laser headlight with darkened trims with dynamic turn signal, 4.0 TFSI engine rated and @2050-4500rpm, separate lithium-ion battery, 40:60 front and rear axle all-wheel drive, wheel-selective torque control, RS adaptive air suspension or RS sport suspension plus with Dynamic Ride Control (DRC), progressive steering, Audi drive select dynamic handling system with 6 profiles, 21-inch cast aluminum wheels in 10-spoke star design with 275/35 size tires (optional 22-inch 5-V-spoke trapezoid design wheels in silver, matt titanium look, gloss turned finish, and gloss anthracite black, gloss turned finish with 285/30 tires), front and rear steel brake discs with black (optional red) calipers (RS ceramic brakes includes front and brake discs with gray, red or blue calipers), 'RS Monitor' MMI touch response display, optional head-up display, aluminium shift paddles, RS and RS 6 logos at steering wheel interior, seats and the illuminated front door sill trims; seats in black pearl Nappa leather/Alcantara upholstery with RS embossing and rhombus pattern (optional perforated Valcona leather with honeycomb pattern and RS embossing), optional carbon, wood natural, gray-brown, or matt aluminum inlays, optional swiveling trailer towing hitch with electric release, optional camera-based trailer assist. RS design packages (red and gray) includes steering wheel rim, gear lever gaiter and knee pads in Alcantara with contrasting stitching; belt straps with color edging, RS floor mats. Dynamic package adds quattro sport differential dynamic all-wheel steering, increased top speed to . Dynamic package plus package adds dynamic package feature, plus increased top speed to .


title: Audi A6

text: Based on A6/A7 Sportback body, it included 22-inch wheels, LED projectors built in into each side of the body, 100 kWh battery.


title: Audi A6

text: The 2019 Audi A6 Sedan made its North American debut at the 2018 New York International Auto Show. At that time, Audi had stated that the A6 Avant will not be sold in the United States, however the new RS6 Avant will be sold in the US for the first time in 2020. The A6 allroad is also on sale for the first time in the United States and Canada for the first time since 2005.


title: Audi A6

text: Audi A6 allroad quattro won Auto Bild Allrad's All-Wheel Drive Car of the Year under the Crossover category.


title: Audi A6

text: Following the launch of the new A6, Audi officially stopped production of the A6 and A7 TDI vehicles using V6 TDI Gen2 evo EU6 engines due to an investigation on newly discovered emissions cheating software.


title: Audi A6

text: According to Dunne & Company, a research company, as of 2011, purchases in China and Hong Kong make up about half of the 229,200 Audi A6s sold in the world. By 2012 many government officials in China began driving with Audi A6s. After a 1994 campaign from the Chinese government to have officials stop driving Mercedes stretch limousines, the officials began using black Audi A6 cars. Michael Wines of "The New York Times" wrote that "More than a perk, the black Audi is a rolling advertisement for its occupant’s importance and impunity in a nation obsessed with status."


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics. For "Gravity's Rainbow", Pynchon won the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon served two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known: "V." (1963), "The Crying of Lot 49" (1966), and "Gravity's Rainbow" (1973). His 2009 novel "Inherent Vice" was adapted into a feature film of the same name by director Paul Thomas Anderson in 2014. Pynchon is notoriously reclusive from the media; few photographs of him have been published, and rumors about his location and identity have circulated since the 1960s. Pynchon's most recent novel, "Bleeding Edge", was published on September 17, 2013.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Thomas Pynchon was born on May 8, 1937, in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, one of three children of engineer and politician Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Sr. (1907–1995) and Katherine Frances Bennett (1909–1996), a nurse. His earliest American ancestor, William Pynchon, emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, then became the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1636, and thereafter a long line of Pynchon descendants found wealth and repute on American soil. Aspects of Pynchon's ancestry and family background have partially inspired his fiction writing, particularly in the Slothrop family histories related in the short story "The Secret Integration" (1964) and "Gravity's Rainbow" (1973). During his childhood, Pynchon alternately attended Episcopal services with his father and Roman Catholic services with his mother.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: A "voracious reader and precocious writer," Pynchon is believed to have skipped two grades before high school. Pynchon attended Oyster Bay High School in Oyster Bay, where he was awarded "student of the year" and contributed short fictional pieces to his school newspaper. These juvenilia incorporated some of the literary motifs and recurring subject matter he would use throughout his career: oddball names, sophomoric humor, illicit drug use, and paranoia.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Pynchon graduated from high school in 1953 at the age of 16. That fall, he went to Cornell University to study engineering physics. At the end of his sophomore year, he enlisted to serve in the U.S. Navy. He attended boot camp at United States Naval Training Center Bainbridge, Maryland, then received training to be an electrician at a base in Norfolk, Virginia. In 1956, he was aboard the destroyer USS "Hank" in the Mediterranean during the Suez Crisis. According to recollections from his Navy friends, Pynchon said at the time that he did not intend to complete his college education.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In 1957, he returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English. His first published story, "The Small Rain", appeared in the "Cornell Writer" in March 1959, and narrates an actual experience of a friend who had served in the Army; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in the Navy. His short story, "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna", was published in the Spring 1959 issue of "Epoch".


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: While at Cornell, Pynchon started his friendships with Richard Fariña, Kirkpatrick Sale and David Shetzline; Pynchon would go on to dedicate "Gravity's Rainbow" to Fariña, as well as serve as his best man and as his pallbearer. Together the two briefly led what Pynchon has called a "micro-cult" devoted to Oakley Hall's 1958 novel "Warlock". Pynchon later reminisced about his college days in the introduction he wrote in 1983 for Fariña's novel "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me", first published in 1966. He reportedly attended lectures given by Vladimir Nabokov, who then taught literature at Cornell. Although Nabokov later said that he had no memory of Pynchon, Nabokov's wife Véra, who graded her husband's class papers, commented that she remembered his distinctive handwriting as a mixture of printed and cursive letters, "half printing, half script." In 1958, Pynchon and Sale wrote part or all of a science-fiction musical, "Minstrel Island", which portrayed a dystopian future in which IBM rules the world. Pynchon received his B.A. with distinction as a member of Phi Beta Kappa in June 1959.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: After leaving Cornell, Pynchon began to work on his first novel: "V". From February 1960 to September 1962, he was employed as a technical writer at Boeing in Seattle, where he compiled safety articles for the "Bomarc Service News", a support newsletter for the BOMARC surface-to-air missile deployed by the U.S. Air Force. Pynchon's experiences at Boeing inspired his depictions of the "Yoyodyne" corporation in "V." and "The Crying of Lot 49", and both his background in physics and the technical journalism he undertook at Boeing provided much raw material for "Gravity's Rainbow". When published in 1963, "V." won a William Faulkner Foundation Award for the best first novel of the year. (It was a finalist for the National Book Award.)


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: After resigning from Boeing, Pynchon spent some time in New York and Mexico before moving to California, where he was reportedly based for much of the 1960s and early 1970s, most notably in an apartment in Manhattan Beach, as he was composing what would become the highly regarded "Gravity's Rainbow".


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: A negative aspect that Pynchon retrospectively found in the hippie cultural and literary movement, both in the form of the Beats of the 1950s and the resurgence form of the 1960s, was that it "placed too much emphasis on youth, including the eternal variety."


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In 1964, his application to study mathematics as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley was turned down. In 1966, Pynchon wrote a first-hand report on the aftermath and legacy of the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. Titled "A Journey Into the Mind of Watts", the article was published in "The New York Times Magazine".


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: From the mid-1960s Pynchon has also regularly provided blurbs and introductions for a wide range of novels and non-fiction works. One of the first of these pieces was a brief review of Oakley Hall's "Warlock" which appeared, along with comments by seven other writers on "neglected books", as part of a feature titled "A Gift of Books" in the December 1965 issue of "Holiday".


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In 1968, Pynchon was one of 447 signatories to the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest". Full-page advertisements in the "New York Post" and "The New York Review of Books" listed the names of those who had pledged not to pay "the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or any war-designated tax increase", and stated their belief "that American involvement in Vietnam is morally wrong".


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In an April 1964 letter to his agent, Candida Donadio, Pynchon wrote that he was facing a creative crisis, with four novels in progress, announcing: "If they come out on paper anything like they are inside my head then it will be the literary event of the millennium."


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In the mid-1960s, Pynchon lived at 217 33rd St. in Manhattan Beach, California, in a small downstairs apartment.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In December 1965, Pynchon politely turned down an invitation from Stanley Edgar Hyman to teach literature at Bennington College, writing that he had resolved, two or three years earlier, to write three novels at once. Pynchon described the decision as "a moment of temporary insanity", but noted that he was "too stubborn to let any of them go, let alone all of them."


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Pynchon's second novel, "The Crying of Lot 49", was published a few months later in 1966. Whether it was one of the three or four novels Pynchon had in progress is not known, but in a 1965 letter to Donadio, Pynchon had written that he was in the middle of writing a "potboiler". When the book grew to 155 pages, he called it, "a short story, but with gland trouble", and hoped that Donadio could "unload it on some poor sucker."


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: "The Crying of Lot 49" won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award shortly after publication. Although more concise and linear in its structure than Pynchon's other novels, its labyrinthine plot features an ancient, underground mail service known as "The Tristero" or "Trystero", a parody of a Jacobean revenge drama called "The Courier's Tragedy", and a corporate conspiracy involving the bones of World War II American GIs being used as charcoal cigarette filters. It proposes a series of seemingly incredible interconnections between these events and other similarly bizarre revelations that confront the novel's protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Like "V.," the novel contains a wealth of references to science and technology and to obscure historical events, with both books dwelling on the detritus of American society and culture. "The Crying of Lot 49" also continues Pynchon's strategy of composing parodic song lyrics and punning names, and referencing aspects of popular culture within his prose narratives. In particular, it incorporates a very direct allusion to the protagonist of Nabokov's "Lolita" within the lyric of a love lament sung by a member of "The Paranoids", an American teenage band who deliberately sing their songs with British accents (p. 17).


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Pynchon's most celebrated novel is his third, "Gravity's Rainbow", published in 1973. An intricate and allusive fiction that combines and elaborates on many of the themes of his earlier work, including preterition, paranoia, racism, colonialism, conspiracy, synchronicity, and entropy, the novel has spawned a wealth of commentary and critical material, including reader's guides, books and scholarly articles, online concordances and discussions, and art works. Its artistic value is often compared to that of James Joyce's "Ulysses". Some scholars have hailed it as the greatest American post-WW2 novel, and it has similarly been described as "literally an anthology of postmodernist themes and devices".


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: The major portion of "Gravity's Rainbow" takes place in London and Europe in the final months of World War II and the weeks immediately following VE Day, and is narrated for the most part from within the historical moment in which it is set. In this way, Pynchon's text enacts a type of dramatic irony whereby neither the characters nor the various narrative voices are aware of specific historical circumstances, such as the Holocaust and, except as hints, premonitions and mythography, the complicity between Western corporate interests and the Nazi war machine, which figure prominently in readers' apprehensions of the novel's historical context. For example, at war's end the narrator observes: "There are rumors of a War Crimes Tribunal under way in Nürnberg. No one Slothrop has listened to is clear who's trying whom for what ... " (p. 681) Such an approach generates dynamic tension and moments of acute self-consciousness, as both reader and author seem drawn ever deeper into the "plot", in various senses of that term:


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: The novel invokes anti-authority sentiments, often through violations of narrative conventions and integrity. For example, as the protagonist, Tyrone Slothrop, considers the fact that his own family "made its money killing trees", he apostrophizes his apology and plea for advice to the coppice within which he has momentarily taken refuge. In an overt incitement to eco-activism, Pynchon's narrative agency then has it that "a medium-sized pine nearby nods its top and suggests, 'Next time you come across a logging operation out here, find one of their tractors that isn't being guarded, and take its oil filter with you. That's what you can do.'" (p. 553)


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Encyclopedic in scope and often self-conscious in style, the novel displays erudition in its treatment of an array of material drawn from the fields of psychology, chemistry, mathematics, history, religion, music, literature, human sexuality, and film. Pynchon wrote the first draft of "Gravity's Rainbow" in "neat, tiny script on engineer's quadrille paper". Pynchon worked on the novel throughout the 1960s and early 1970s while he was living in California and Mexico City.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: "Gravity's Rainbow" shared the 1974 National Book Award with "A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories" by Isaac Bashevis Singer (split award). That same year, the Pulitzer Prize fiction panel unanimously recommended "Gravity's Rainbow" for the award, but the Pulitzer board vetoed the jury's recommendation, describing the novel as "unreadable", "turgid", "overwritten", and in parts "obscene". (No Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded and finalists were not recognized before 1980.) In 1975, Pynchon declined the William Dean Howells Medal.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: A collection of Pynchon's early short stories, "Slow Learner", was published in 1984, with a lengthy autobiographical introduction. In October of the same year, an article titled "Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?" was published in "The New York Times Book Review". In April 1988, Pynchon contributed an extensive review of Gabriel García Márquez's novel "Love in the Time of Cholera" to "The New York Times", under the title "The Heart's Eternal Vow". Another article, titled "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee", was published in June 1993 in "The New York Times Book Review", as one in a series of articles in which various writers reflected on each of the Seven Deadly Sins. Pynchon's subject was "Sloth".


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Pynchon's fourth novel, "Vineland", was published in 1990, but disappointed some fans and critics. It did, however, receive a positive review from the novelist Salman Rushdie. The novel is set in California in the 1980s and 1960s and describes the relationship between an FBI COINTELPRO agent and a female radical filmmaker. Its strong socio-political undercurrents detail the constant battle between authoritarianism and communalism, and the nexus between resistance and complicity, but with a typically Pynchonian sense of humor.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In 1988, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and, since the early 1990s at least, he has been frequently cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. American literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Cormac McCarthy.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: The meticulously researched novel is a sprawling postmodernist saga recounting the lives and careers of the English astronomer Charles Mason and his partner, the surveyor Jeremiah Dixon, the surveyors of the Mason–Dixon line, during the birth of the American Republic. Some commentators acknowledged it as a welcome return to form. The American critic Harold Bloom hailed the novel as Pynchon's "masterpiece to date".


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: A variety of rumors pertaining to the subject matter of "Against the Day" circulated for a number of years. Most specific of these were comments made by the former German minister of culture Michael Naumann, who stated that he assisted Pynchon in his research about "a Russian mathematician [who] studied for David Hilbert in Göttingen", and that the new novel would trace the life and loves of Sofia Kovalevskaya.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In July 2006, a new, untitled novel by Pynchon was announced along with a synopsis written by Pynchon himself, which appeared on Amazon.com; it stated that the novel's action takes place between the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the time immediately following World War I. "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead", Pynchon wrote in his book description, "it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred." He promised cameos by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi and Groucho Marx, as well as "stupid songs" and "strange sexual practices". Subsequently, the title of the new book was reported to be "Against the Day" and a Penguin spokesperson confirmed that the synopsis was Pynchon's.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: "Against the Day" was released on November 21, 2006, and is 1,085 pages long in the first edition hardcover. The book was given almost no promotion by Penguin and professional book reviewers were given little time in advance to review the book. An edited version of Pynchon's synopsis was used as the jacket-flap copy and Kovalevskaya does appear, although as only one of over a hundred characters.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Composed in part of a series of interwoven pastiches of popular fiction genres from the era in which it is set, the novel inspired mixed reactions from critics and reviewers. One reviewer remarked, "It is brilliant, but it is exhaustingly brilliant." Other reviewers described "Against the Day" as "lengthy and rambling" and "a baggy monster of a book", while negative appraisals condemned the novel for its "silliness" or characterized its action as "fairly pointless" and remained unimpressed by its "grab bag of themes".


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: A synopsis and brief extract from the novel, along with the novel's title, "Inherent Vice", and dust jacket image, were printed in Penguin Press' Summer 2009 catalogue. The book was advertised by the publisher as "part-noir, part-psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon—private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a cannabis haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog."


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: A promotional video for the novel was released by Penguin Books on August 4, 2009, with the character voiceover narrated by the author himself.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: "Bleeding Edge" takes place in Manhattan's Silicon Alley during "the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11." The novel was published on September 17, 2013, to positive reviews.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Poet L. E. Sissman wrote from "The New Yorker": "He is almost a mathematician of prose, who calculates the least and the greatest stress each word and line, each pun and ambiguity, can bear, and applies his knowledge accordingly and virtually without lapses, though he takes many scary, bracing linguistic risks. Thus his remarkably supple diction can first treat of a painful and delicate love scene and then roar, without pause, into the sounds and echoes of a drugged and drunken orgy." Pynchon's style is commonly classified as postmodernist.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Pynchon's work explores philosophical, theological, and sociological ideas exhaustively, though in quirky and approachable ways. His writings demonstrate a strong affinity with the practitioners and artifacts of low culture, including comic books and cartoons, pulp fiction, popular films, television programs, cookery, urban myths, paranoia and conspiracy theories, and folk art. This blurring of the conventional boundary between "high" and "low" culture has been seen as one of the defining characteristics of his writing.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In particular, Pynchon has revealed himself in his fiction and non-fiction as an aficionado of popular music. Song lyrics and mock musical numbers appear in each of his novels, and, in his autobiographical introduction to the "Slow Learner" collection of early stories, he reveals a fondness for both jazz and rock and roll. The character McClintic Sphere in "V." is a fictional composite of jazz musicians such as Ornette Coleman, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. In "The Crying of Lot 49", the lead singer of The Paranoids sports "a Beatle haircut" and sings with an English accent. In the closing pages of "Gravity's Rainbow", there is an apocryphal report that Tyrone Slothrop, the novel's protagonist, played kazoo and harmonica as a guest musician on a record released by The Fool in the 1960s (having magically recovered the latter instrument, his "harp", in a German stream in 1945, after losing it down the toilet in 1939 at the Roseland Ballroom in Roxbury, Boston, to the strains of the jazz standard "Cherokee", upon which tune Charlie Parker was simultaneously inventing bebop in New York, as Pynchon describes). In "Vineland", both Zoyd Wheeler and Isaiah Two Four are also musicians: Zoyd played keyboards in a '60s surf band called The Corvairs, while Isaiah played in a punk band called Billy Barf and the Vomitones. In "Mason & Dixon", one of the characters plays on the "Clavier" the varsity drinking song that will later become "The Star-Spangled Banner"; while in another episode a character remarks tangentially "Sometimes, it's hard to be a woman".


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In his introduction to "Slow Learner", Pynchon acknowledges a debt to the anarchic bandleader Spike Jones, and in 1994, he penned a 3000-word set of liner notes for the album "Spiked!", a collection of Jones's recordings released on the short-lived BMG Catalyst label. Pynchon also wrote the liner notes for "Nobody's Cool", the second album of indie rock band Lotion, in which he states that "rock and roll remains one of the last honorable callings, and a working band is a miracle of everyday life. Which is basically what these guys do". He is also known to be a fan of Roky Erickson.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Investigations and digressions into the realms of human sexuality, psychology, sociology, mathematics, science, and technology recur throughout Pynchon's works. One of his earliest short stories, "Low-lands" (1960), features a meditation on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle as a metaphor for telling stories about one's own experiences. His next published work, "Entropy" (1960), introduced the concept which was to become synonymous with Pynchon's name (though Pynchon later admitted the "shallowness of [his] understanding" of the subject, and noted that choosing an abstract concept first and trying to construct a narrative based on it was "a lousy way to go about writing a story"). Another early story, "Under the Rose" (1961), includes among its cast of characters a cyborg set anachronistically in Victorian-era Egypt (a type of writing now called steampunk). This story, significantly reworked by Pynchon, appears as Chapter 3 of "V." "The Secret Integration" (1964), Pynchon's last published short story, is a sensitively handled coming-of-age tale in which a group of young boys face the consequences of the American policy of racial integration. At one point in the story, the boys attempt to understand the new policy by way of the mathematical operation, the only sense of the word with which they are familiar.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: "The Crying of Lot 49" also alludes to entropy and communication theory, and contains scenes and descriptions which parody or appropriate calculus, Zeno's paradoxes, and the thought experiment known as Maxwell's demon. At the same time, the novel also investigates homosexuality, celibacy and both medically sanctioned and illicit psychedelic drug use. "Gravity's Rainbow" describes many varieties of sexual fetishism (including sado-masochism, coprophilia and a borderline case of tentacle erotica), and features numerous episodes of drug use, most notably cannabis but also cocaine, naturally occurring hallucinogens, and the mushroom "Amanita muscaria." "Gravity's Rainbow" also derives much from Pynchon's background in mathematics: at one point, the geometry of garter belts is compared with that of cathedral spires, both described as mathematical singularities. "Mason & Dixon" explores the scientific, theological, and socio-cultural foundations of the Age of Reason while also depicting the relationships between actual historical figures and fictional characters in intricate detail and, like "Gravity's Rainbow", is an archetypal example of the genre of historiographic metafiction.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Pynchon's novels refer overtly to writers as disparate as Henry Adams (in "V.", p. 62), Jorge Luis Borges (in "Gravity’s Rainbow", p. 264), Deleuze and Guattari (in "Vineland", p. 97), Emily Dickinson (in "Gravity’s Rainbow", pp. 27–8), Umberto Eco (in "Mason & Dixon", p. 559), Ralph Waldo Emerson (in "Vineland", p. 369), "Hopkins, T. S. Eliot, di Chirico’s novel "Hebdomeros"" (in "V.", p. 307), William March, Vladimir Nabokov (in "The Crying of Lot 49", p. 120), Patrick O'Brian (in "Mason & Dixon", p. 54), Ishmael Reed (in "Gravity’s Rainbow", p. 558), Rainer Maria Rilke (in "Gravity’s Rainbow", p. 97 f) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (in "V.", p. 278 f), and to a heady mixture of iconic religious and philosophical sources.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Critics have made comparisons of Pynchon's writing with works by Rabelais, Cervantes, Laurence Sterne, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Mann, William S. Burroughs, Ralph Ellison, Patrick White, and Toni Morrison.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Pynchon's work also has similarities with writers in the modernist tradition who wrote long novels dealing with large metaphysical or political issues, such as "Ulysses" by James Joyce, "A Passage to India" by E. M. Forster, "The Apes of God" by Wyndham Lewis, "The Man Without Qualities" by Robert Musil and the "U.S.A." trilogy by John Dos Passos. Pynchon explicitly acknowledges his debt to Beat Generation writers, and expresses his admiration for Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" in particular. He also outlines the specific influence on his own early fiction of literary works by T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Saul Bellow, Herbert Gold, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, John Buchan and Graham Greene, and non-fiction works by Helen Waddell, Norbert Wiener and Isaac Asimov.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Pynchon's work has been cited as an influence and inspiration by many writers, including David Foster Wallace, William Vollmann, Richard Powers, Steve Erickson, David Mitchell, Neal Stephenson, Dave Eggers, William Gibson, Salman Rushdie, Alan Moore, and Tommaso Pincio (whose pseudonym is an Italian rendering of Pynchon's name).


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Thanks to his influence on Gibson and Stephenson in particular, Pynchon became one of the progenitors of cyberpunk fiction; a 1987 essay in "Spin" magazine by Timothy Leary explicitly named "Gravity's Rainbow" as the "Old Testament" of cyberpunk, with Gibson's "Neuromancer" and its sequels as the "New Testament". Though the term "cyberpunk" did not become prevalent until the early 1980s, since Leary's article many readers have retroactively included "Gravity's Rainbow" in the genre, along with other works—"e.g.," Samuel R. Delany's "Dhalgren" and many works of Philip K. Dick—which seem, after the fact, to anticipate cyberpunk styles and themes. The encyclopedic nature of Pynchon's novels also led to some attempts to link his work with the short-lived hypertext fiction movement of the 1990s.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Relatively little is known about Pynchon's private life; he has carefully avoided contact with reporters for more than fifty years. Only a few photos of him are known to exist, nearly all from his high school and college days, and his whereabouts have often remained undisclosed.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: A 1963 review of "V." in "The New York Times Book Review" described Pynchon as "a recluse" living in Mexico, thereby introducing the media label with which journalists have characterized him throughout his career. Nonetheless, Pynchon's personal absence from mass media is one of the notable features of his life, and it has generated many rumors and apocryphal anecdotes.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Pynchon wrote an introduction for his short story collection "Slow Learner". His comments on the stories after reading them again for the first time in many years, and his recollection of the events surrounding their creation, amount to the author's only autobiographical comments to his readers.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: After the publication and success of "Gravity's Rainbow", interest mounted in finding out more about the identity of the author. At the 1974 National Book Awards ceremony, the president of Viking Press, Tom Guinzberg, arranged for double-talking comedian "Professor" Irwin Corey to accept the prize on Pynchon's behalf. Many of the assembled guests had no idea who Corey was and had never seen the author, so they assumed it was Pynchon himself on the stage delivering Corey's trademark torrent of rambling, pseudo-scholarly verbiage. Toward the end of Corey's address a streaker ran through the hall, adding further to the confusion.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: An article published in the "SoHo Weekly News" claimed that Pynchon was in fact J. D. Salinger. Pynchon's written response to this theory was simple: "Not bad. Keep trying."


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Thereafter, the first piece to provide substantial information about Pynchon's personal life was a biographical account written by a former Cornell University friend, Jules Siegel, and published in "Playboy" magazine. In his article, Siegel reveals that Pynchon had a complex about his teeth and underwent extensive and painful reconstructive surgery, was nicknamed "Tom" at Cornell and attended Mass diligently, acted as best man at Siegel's wedding, and that he later also had an affair with Siegel's wife. Siegel recalls Pynchon saying he did attend some of Vladimir Nabokov's lectures at Cornell but that he could hardly make out what Nabokov was saying because of his thick Russian accent. Siegel also records Pynchon's commenting: "Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength", an observation borne out by the crankiness and zealotry that has attached itself to his name and work in subsequent years.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Pynchon does not like to talk with reporters, and refuses the spectacle of celebrity and public appearances. Some readers and critics have suggested that there were and are perhaps aesthetic (and ideological) motivations behind his choice to remain aloof from public life. For example, the protagonist in Janette Turner Hospital's short story "For Mr. Voss or Occupant" (published in 1991), explains to her daughter that she is writing


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Pynchon has published a number of articles and reviews in the mainstream American media, including words of support for Salman Rushdie and his then-wife, Marianne Wiggins, after the fatwa was pronounced against Rushdie by the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In the following year, Rushdie's enthusiastic review of Pynchon's "Vineland" prompted Pynchon to send him another message hinting that if Rushdie were ever in New York, the two should arrange a meeting. Eventually, the two did have dinner together. Rushdie later commented: "He was extremely Pynchon-esque. He was the Pynchon I wanted him to be".


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In 1990, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson—a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt and a granddaughter of Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg trials prosecutor—and fathered a son, Jackson, in 1991. The disclosure of Pynchon's 1990s location in New York City, after many years in which he was believed to be dividing his time between Mexico and northern California, led some journalists and photographers to try to track him down. Shortly before the publication of "Mason & Dixon" in 1997, a CNN camera crew filmed him in Manhattan. Angered by this invasion of his privacy, he called CNN asking that he not be identified in the footage of the street scenes near his home. When asked by CNN, Pynchon rejected their characterization of him as a recluse, remarking "My belief is that 'recluse' is a code word generated by journalists ... meaning, 'doesn't like to talk to reporters'." CNN also quoted him as saying, "Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed." The next year, a reporter for the "Sunday Times" managed to snap a photo of him as he was walking with his son.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: After several references to Pynchon's work and reputation were made on NBC's "The John Larroquette Show", Pynchon (through his agent) reportedly contacted the series' producers to offer suggestions and corrections. When a local Pynchon sighting became a major plot point in a 1994 episode of the series, Pynchon was sent the script for his approval; as well as providing the title of a fictitious work to be used in one episode ("Pandemonium of the Sun"), the novelist apparently vetoed a final scene that called for an extra playing him to be filmed from behind, walking away from the shot. Pynchon also insisted that it should be specifically mentioned in the episode that Pynchon was seen wearing a T-shirt showing psychedelic-rock musician Roky Erickson. According to the "Los Angeles Times", this spurred an increase in sales of Erickson's albums. Also during the 1990s, Pynchon befriended members of the band Lotion and contributed liner notes for the band's 1995 album "Nobody's Cool". Although the band initially claimed that he had seen them in concert and become a groupie, in 2009 they revealed to "The New Yorker" that they met him through his accountant, who was drummer Rob Youngberg's mother; she gave him an advance copy of the album and he agreed to write the liner notes, only later seeing them in concert. The novelist then conducted an interview with the band ("Lunch With Lotion") for "Esquire" in June 1996 in the lead-up to the publication of "Mason & Dixon". More recently, Pynchon provided faxed answers to questions submitted by author David Hajdu and permitted excerpts from his personal correspondence to be quoted in Hajdu's 2001 book, "Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña".


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Pynchon's insistence on maintaining his personal privacy and on having his work speak for itself has resulted in a number of outlandish rumors and hoaxes over the years. Indeed, claims that Pynchon was the Unabomber or a sympathizer with the Waco Branch Davidians after the 1993 siege were upstaged in the mid-1990s by the invention of an elaborate rumor insinuating that Pynchon and one "Wanda Tinasky" were the same person. A collection of the Tinasky letters was eventually published as a paperback book in 1996; however, Pynchon himself denied having written the letters, and no direct attribution of the letters to Pynchon was ever made. "Literary detective" Donald Foster subsequently showed that the "Letters" were in fact written by an obscure Beat writer, Tom Hawkins, who had murdered his wife and then committed suicide in 1988. Foster's evidence was conclusive, including finding the typewriter on which the "Tinasky" letters had been written.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In 1998, over 120 letters that Pynchon had written to his longtime agent, Candida Donadio, were donated by the family of a private collector, Carter Burden, to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. The letters ranged from 1963 to 1982, thus covering some of the author's most creative and prolific years. Although the Morgan Library originally intended to allow scholars to view the letters, at Pynchon's request the Burden family and Morgan Library agreed to seal these letters until after Pynchon's death.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: Responding to the image which has been manufactured in the media over the years, Pynchon made two cameo animated appearances on the television series "The Simpsons" in 2004. The first occurs in the episode "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife", in which Marge Simpson becomes a novelist. He plays himself, with a paper bag over his head, and provides a blurb for the back cover of Marge's book, speaking in a broad Long Island accent: "Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!" He then starts yelling at passing cars: "Hey, over here, have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But, wait! There's more!" In his second appearance, in "All's Fair in Oven War", Pynchon's dialogue consists entirely of puns on his novel titles ("These wings are 'V'-licious! I'll put this recipe in 'The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook', right next to 'The Frying of Latke 49'."). The cartoon representation of Pynchon reappears in a third, non-speaking cameo, as a guest at the fictional WordLoaf convention depicted in the 18th season episode "Moe'N'a Lisa". The episode first aired on November 19, 2006, the Sunday before Pynchon's sixth novel, "Against the Day", was released. According to Al Jean on the 15th season DVD episode commentary, Pynchon wanted to do the series because his son was a big fan.


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: During pre-production of "All's Fair in Oven War", Pynchon faxed one page from the script to producer Matt Selman with several handwritten edits to his lines. Of particular emphasis was Pynchon's outright refusal to utter the line "No wonder Homer is such a fat-ass." Pynchon's objection apparently had nothing to do with the salty language as he explained in a footnote to the edit, "... Homer is my role model and I can't speak ill of him."


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In celebration of the 100th anniversary of George Orwell's birth, Pynchon wrote a new foreword to Orwell's celebrated dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four". The introduction presents a brief biography of Orwell as well as a reflection on some of the critical responses to "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Pynchon also offers his own reflection in the introduction that "what is perhaps [most] important, indeed necessary, to a working prophet, is to be able to see deeper than most of us into the human soul."


title: Thomas Pynchon

text: In July 2006, Amazon.com created a page showing an upcoming 992-page, untitled, Thomas Pynchon novel. A description of the soon-to-be published novel appeared on Amazon purporting to be written by Pynchon himself. The description was taken down, prompting speculation over its authenticity, but the blurb was soon back up along with the title of Pynchon's new novel "Against the Day".