Audi Quattro Concept 2012

Everything about this car is evocative. But as designer Wolf Seebers puts it, “We did not simply graft pieces of the original car’s styling onto the new one. You have to be careful with retro design. We wanted something that would express a new design language, something that will appear on all new Audi sport vehicles.” A design that has to commemorate a classic but also lead the way for future vehicles sounds like a stylistic pressure cooker, but design chief Wolfgang Egger’s team pulled it off. The body is a combination of Audi’s aluminum space-frame technology and assorted carbon-fiber pieces (the hood, the hatch), and the body in white weighs 350 pounds. The whole thing is claimed to weigh 1300 kg, about the same as the old steel Sport Quattro. But bear in mind that the old car carried none of the multifarious safety systems present in a modern vehicle. Thus, in the Quattro concept, even the seats are light, despite being equipped with the usual adjustment motors. It’s a real car, with a platform adapted from the RS 5 and a tuned version of the direct-injected turbo five from the TT RS. In this application, the engine is mounted longitudinally and hooked to a six-speed manual transmission borrowed from an S4. Audi said it produces 402 HP and 480 NM. It is powered by a turbocharged TFSI five-cylinder 2.5L engine, which is able to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in 3.9 seconds. Based on the platform of the Audi RS5, with a wheelbase shortened by 150mm, the styling is a reinterpretation of the short-wheelbase Audi Sport Quattro. The body is constructed in aluminium using Audi Space Frame technology, and additional carbon fibre components.