TUNNEL VISIONARIES

The Eurotunnel service turns 30 this year, as does another groundbreaking cross-continent shuttle the Audi RS2. Stephen Dobie toasts their success

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It's the summer of 1994. Queen Elizabeth II has just opened the Channel Tunnel, while Wet Wet Wet's Love Is All Around steamrollers the British music charts, only dethroned after 15 weeks at number one by the Europopdance fusion might of Whigfield. How either of those songs have aged is purely subjective. As for the other 30-year-old hit you see here, well, we're about to find out.

Launching the same year as LeShuttle was Germany's own idea of quick, crosscontinental transport. The Audi RS2 Avant is the first dot on a thrilling timeline that takes us right up to the mighty RS6 Avant of today. Classy, luxurious and roomy: the perfect car to revisit those halcyon early days of half-hour channel-hopping and the phenomenon of the booze cruise. We won't uncouthly fill its 1200 litres of boot space with cheap plonk, however; today is all about a celebratory bottle of champagne to toast two icons of European transport.

The Channel Tunnel needs little introduction. This backbone of freight and passenger movement ranks alongside the Empire State Building and the Panama Canal in the seven modern architectural wonders of the world. The idea cropped up throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, but construction of the tunnel didn't begin until 1988, enlisting 11 boring machines, 280 miles of pipework and 13,000 workers. The unity of its Anglo-French management continues to this day, undeterred by the challenges of Brexit. Oh, and each passenger train is half a mile long.