THE CONCEPT
T H AT PAYS HOM AG E
THE CLASSIC
T H AT E STA BLISH ED AU DI
FOURSIGHT by A A RON ROBINSON photography by ROBERT K ER I A N
FEATURE
AUDI’S QUATTRO WAS A BIG IDEA 30 YEARS AGO.
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AND, AS A NEW CONCEPT PROVES, IT STILL IS TODAY. CARA N D D R I V E R . C O M
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FEATURE
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rom Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro on down to Audi’s Quattro, German speakers for centuries have abandoned their own language for Italian to express articles of passion. Quattro means “four” in the language of love, undoubtedly a better name for the driveline hardware that has come to define Audi’s high-tech and sporting image than the German vier, which is pronounced “fear.” Can you see the ads? “Come drive the new 5000S Fear at your Audi dealer today!” With apologies to Bismarck, Quattro just sounds more prestissimo, especially when it’s plastered to the sawed-off rump of a new concept two-seater intended to stoke scintillating memories of Audi’s rally glory days. Audi unwrapped the Quattro Concept at the 2010 Paris auto show in September, and just a few months later delivered it to us tanked up and ready to run over asphalt at realistic road speeds (provided that we first swept its path clean of loose stones and dust and immediately put the $4.6 million hand-built Fabergé egg back in its truck at the first sign of rain or temperatures below 45 degrees). While we pondered the weather reports, as well as what long-term significance, if
any, Audi’s nostalgic glance back would ultimately have on its future products, a particularly noteworthy time traveler from those old days also materialized. In 1983, to homologate a short-wheelbase version of the Quattro Coupe for Group B rallying, Audi started building 224 Sport Quattros for testing, racing, and selling to wealthy civilians as road cars [see sidebar]. One of these precious hen’s teeth, painted red and wearing modern Michelin Pilot Sport Cup near-slicks, makes a natural wingman for a Quattro Concept photo shoot. Our sample of Audi’s potential future was to be mingled with a full-immersion
dunking into its turbocharged, mudslinging, sideways-drifting past. These days, Audi is a lit skyrocket. The Volkswagen Group has poured cash and technical resources into its upscale brand during the past decade with the intention of moving it in line with BMW and MercedesBenz in the hearts of its primarily German, American, and Chinese customers. Having recently delighted in the new A8 and in selecting the aging A6 over its competitors in a comparison test [August 2010], we’d say the Ingolstadt boys are succeeding. The plainly named Quattro Concept began as sketches two years ago but was
SOMETHING BORROWED THE QUATTRO CONCEPT’S BUZZ-CUT TAIL, LARGE TRAPEZOIDAL QUARTER GLASS, AND ASYMMETRICAL HOOD VENT ARE DIRECT SHOUT OUTS TO THE ORIGINAL S1 SPORT QUATTRO. THE REST LOOKS VAGUELY A5-ISH BUT WITH A LOWER ROOF AND A NEW GLARING FACE.
Long before the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, when the Impreza WRX was barely a gleam in Subaru’s eyes, there was the Ur-Quattro. Ur means “original,” and the first Quattro you could buy was a square-cut, three-door luxury coupe shown to the public at the 1980 Geneva motor show and delivered to showrooms in November of that year. Anticipating the Quattro, Audi had
already begun twisting arms at the German racing federation to lean on the global sanctioning body, the FIA, to open the international rally circuit to four-wheel drive. The 1979 rulebook contained the desired amendment, and Audi was to have the advantage to itself for three years. Rallying would never be the same. The new Quattro Coupe took the series in a blitzkrieg, winning three rallies in its rookie season of 1981, and seven events and the manufacturers’ title the following year. In 1983, Lancia fired back with its purpose-built Stratos replacement, the 037, a lighter, faster, mid-engine Quattro killer that proved to
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be the opening shot in a war of megapowered—and deadly—Group B rally specials. (For a modern interpretation of the Stratos, see p. 66.) Unveiled at the 1983 Frankfurt motor show was Audi’s response. The Sport Quattro was a homologation special, meaning 200 copies were to be built to render it a legal “production car” under competition rules, though only 164 ultimately reached private hands. Driving its development was Ferdinand Piëch, the icy will behind the Porsche 917, the former Volkswagen Group chairman, and an engineer with a long history of pushing his underlings to outrageous feats. Priced at the equivalent of $75,000, the Sport Quattro was, until the Porsche 959 appeared in 1986, the most expensive car sold in Germany. Per the rules, the basic suspension design of struts in each corner remained the same, though to cut the curb weight of its porky Quattro, Audi shortened the Coupe’s wheelbase by more than a foot (12.6 inches) and its overall length by 10.6 inches. The front and rear fenders were laid up in Kevlar-reinforced epoxy and flared out to house the deeper 15-by-9.0-inch wheels and 235/45 tires; the hood and trunk were also rendered in composites. A lip across the back third of the roof is where the plastic meets sheet steel. A styling feature echoed in the new Quattro Concept is the jaunty heat vent on the passenger
side of the Sport’s hood, right above the big turbo. A long-stroke, superboosted 2133-cc five-cylinder featured an aluminum block (versus the production cast iron) capped by a twin-cam four-valve aluminum cylinder head, which took horsepower to an advertised 306 in the road versions and as high as 510 in the later rally version. A five-speed transmission sent torque through open front, center, and rear differentials, the latter two of which could be manually locked using a two-position pneumatic pull knob on the dash. In the end, 224 Sport Quattros were produced, most of the assembly work taking place at Baur, a specialist body maker near Audi’s headquarters. The Sport Quattro came with an integrated roll cage and fulfilled a wish list for Audi’s rally drivers, including cutting about 800 pounds from the weight of the production Coupe (our road-legal version was 2990 pounds with a 60/40 front-to-rear weight split) and a more upright windshield to eliminate reflections from the dash lights during night stages. For reasons unknown, the rear seats were left in place for road versions, though the wheelbase shortening cut rear legroom to nil. Sitting in the Sport Quattro is a time warp back 28 years to when Audis were little more than dandied-up Volkswagens with rectilinear blackplastic dashboards and analog gauges.
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Slip into the worn Recaro buckets and twist the key; a lumpy cold idle settles to a patter once the temps come up and the Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection gets its bearings. The power delivery of these early turbo brutes requires patience, as it takes the first 4000 revs for the little five-cylinder to generate enough exhaust-gas flow to spin the huge KKK turbo. From there, the engine lunges to its 7200-rpm redline in a rush that must have been thrilling to the first rally drivers testing it in the forest. The feverish snore of the five-cylinder isn’t quite the wailing, backfiring banshee cry of the full race version you can hear on YouTube today, but it’s still pretty exciting. The Sport Quattro feels about as quick as a modern-day WRX and will sit on 100 mph from dawn’s early light until the trunk-mounted tank runs dry, but it takes far more nerve to probe the Audi’s cornering limits. The spooky handling wrought partly by the truncated wheelbase, relatively crude AWD, and stiff, nervous suspension required a new driving style and was the car’s ultimate undoing. It had a tendency to snap from understeer to oversteer without warning, and many of the 164 civilian units were broomed from the roadside in small pieces. The race version won only a single rally event in 1984 at the hands of Stig Blomqvist, while a derivative of the long-wheelbase Quattro called the A2 retained its domination. An evolution of the Sport Quattro in late 1985, dubbed the E2, relocated the radiators to the trunk for better weight distribution and fitted a beard of wind-channeling body extensions. But Audi’s rally dominance was on the wane, and as crashes and casualties mounted due to the escalating speeds in Group B, the company left the series officially at the close of the ’86 season. A Pikes Peak record in 1987 at the hands of Walter Röhrl would prove to be the Sport Quattro’s most significant contribution to raacing history. Even so, the Sport was Quattro before it was cool. Indeed, it’s what made Quattro cool. —AR
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AUTOGRAPHED BY TWO-TIME RALLY CHAMPION WALTER RÖHRL AND HIS NAVIGATOR CHRISTIAN GEISTDÖRFER, THE CONCEPT’S TWO-SEAT CABIN WITH STORAGE BOXES BEHIND THE CHAIRS IS AN OPUS IN LEATHER AND CARBON FIBER.
built in just four months, says the man described as its father, Wolfgang Egger, head of Audi Group Design. Egger bristles at the suggestion that the Concept is retro, saying the idea was to “look back but also look forward” by cribbing certain unmistakable cues from the original 1980–1991 Quattro coupe, such as the chopped tail and triangular C-pillars, but experiment with a new face and more sophisticated surfaces. The four guidepost principles of the design were that it be a compact two-seater with a curb weight less than 3000 pounds, a downsized but high-output engine consistent with current powertrain trends, and, of course, Quattro technology. As with many auto-show stage queens, the one-off Quattro Concept rides on a donor production chassis, namely that of an A5-based RS5 supercoupe. Audi Quattro GmbH, the Neckarsulm-based Audi skunkworks responsible for engineering the highperformance RS models as well as the midengine R8, worked on the Concept’s dirty parts. Engineers cut 5.9 inches from the RS5’s wheelbase, losing the back seat in the process, and trimmed the propulsion hardware accordingly. They also had to adapt the engine of choice to the Concept. The turbo-
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charged, direct-injected 2.5 TFSI five-cylinder from the European-market TT RS and RS3 was selected for its compact size, historically evocative cylinder count, and stout 340-hp output. But it had to be turned 90 degrees, from the transverse mounting of the VW Golf–based TT platform to the longitudinal orientation of the A4/A5 platform. Stephan Reil, head of technical development at Audi Quattro, says the job involved engineering new intake and exhaust components but not altering the block or accessories in any significant way. To reach the horsepower claim of 408, the 2.5 received a larger turbo and more aggressive cam profiles with appropriate computer mapping. The S5 donates its six-speed manual transmission and center differential, as well as its optional torque-vectoring rear differential. Last year’s acquisition of Turin-based Italdesign-Giugiaro by Volkswagen gave the Quattro Concept’s creators a place to source its body and interior. Most concept-car bodies are a kludge of fragile but easy-to-render carbon-fiber and fiberglass bits pieced together with Bondo. Befitting the long Italian tradition of metalworking, the Quattro Concept’s body sides are made of steel, its doors of aluminum, and only its hood and hatch of carbon fiber. No wonder Audi was
willing to let us play with the Concept relatively vigorously—it is mostly built from assembly-line materials. To save time and money, only the female half of the aluminum-zinc kirksite die set was made for the body sides, representing the “positive” or outer surfaces of the panels. Craftsmen using pneumatic hammers worked the steel into the die, says Egger. “They are real artists at this.” Knowing that the body side is steel makes the embossed Audi logo in the concept’s C-pillar somewhat amazing because steel is not an easy material to form into such intricate patterns without wrinkles or tears. We’ve seen this new fearsome face of Audi before on other auto-show cars, including the 2009 e-tron concept. Its main shoutout is that it morphs the big “Nuvolari” grille already used as the corporate face in production cars into a large black void that looks as
if it were made by firing an RPG into the nose. However, it is the small details, including a four-ring Audi logo rendered entirely in naked carbon fiber on the hood, the allcarbon-fiber cargo compartment, and the signature of Audi rally hero Walter Röhrl in the doorjamb, that are the most interesting facets of a concept that is otherwise a stylish but fairly straightforward three-door coupe. A VCR-style remote provides access to the minimalist cockpit by releasing the electric door handles. Typical car-of-the-future special effects have been eschewed; small buttons govern the ersatz climate control and the data screen, and all gauge info is read from a multicolor display in front of the driver, which was fritzy, apparently, due to a bad connector. Power seats and a tilting and telescoping steering column are evidence that this concept is built to be driven. A high center con-
sole bisects the interior into two distinct passenger pods, and upholstery is a 50/50 joint venture between matte-finish carbon fiber and camel-colored leather. Production prerequisites, such as creating usable headand legroom and preserving outward visibility, usually sacrificed at the styling altar in concept cars, have been adhered to in the Quattro Concept. A red button next to the tall shifter—an R8 part number—lights the five-cylinder, which makes what is best described as a lusty moan under acceleration, with the occasional whistling sputter from a releasing waste gate. The shifter feels tighter and better lubricated than in the TT RS we brought along for comparison, and the clutch takeup is velvety enough to be easy even for people wearing concrete shoes. The Concept’s ever-watchful handler permitted us to run it up to 60 mph or so
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(warp speed for a concept car) and throw it through some bends at moderate effort. Since there’s an RS5 underneath, it’s no huge surprise that corner tracking and straightline stability feel firm and tight and within a few ticks of production-ready. The concept’s steering tune is light and quick. After a couple of hours’ driving, the Quattro Concept began to wear in and feel like a regular commuter car. It’s easy to see out of, feels light and nimble, and offers a welcoming cockpit. All we’d ask for is working climate control, the lack of which forced us to open the doors for air at every pause. Auto-show scuttlebutt spread by Audi’s PR men has the Quattro Concept appearing as a $250,000 limited-edition flagship, with a price ostensibly justified by the abundant use of exotic, lightweight materials. We think that’s a smoke screen. With “only” 408 horsepower from a five-cylinder in a body a little too sedan-upright—even if the roof is 1.6 inches lower than an RS5’s—it would be a punch line at that price. Only the craftiest of salesmen would be able to steer a customer past the $118,450 base R8 (or $151,750 R8 V-10) to a Quattro. We’re thinking a better price would be
$97,750, which is, coincidentally, the base price of a 2011 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S. But the quickest way to tongue-tie an Audi executive is to mention Porsche in an interview, as it’s highly impolitic within the Volkswagen empire to discuss their overlap, what with Porsche recently being absorbed by VW. When I asked Egger about it, he and Reil and the accompanying PR attendant all stepped on each other to make vigorous denials, saying the Quattro is just a styling exercise for which there is no business case yet and no decision made and no timeline for a decision. They didn’t even say the word “Porsche.” There is no black Stuttgart stallion in the room, as far as they are concerned. Still, Audi has already created a beachhead in Porsche’s territory with the R8, and the Quattro Concept would be a great backfill to the catalog. It would be perfect as an alternative for buyers with 911 money to spend but greater comfort and everyday usability on their mind. To that, Audi, we say andiamo! Let’s go!
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CRUISE WITH THE QUATTROS, CONCEPT AND SPORT. CARANDDRIVER.COM/QUATTROS
THE EVOLUTION OF QUATTRO
In the beginning: The 1977 Volkswagen Iltis, a go-anywhere Sherpa for the German military. The front and rear differentials are open bevel-gear type with a manual engagement of the front axle for snow, slick surfaces, or rough terrain.
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SINCE THERE’S AN RS5 UNDERNEATH, IT’S NO HUGE SURPRISE THAT CORNER TRACKING AND STRAIGHT-LINE STABILITY FEEL FIRM AND TIGHT AND WITHIN A FEW TICKS OF PRODUCTION-READY.
Unlike the Iltis, the 1980 Quattro Coupe’s four-wheel drive is permanently engaged with open front, center, and rear differentials and a 50/50 front-to-rear dry-road torque split. It solves the Iltis’s problem of dry-road driveline windup and corner crabbing with a simple center differential. A novel hollow transmission-output shaft to the front axle kept the AWD system light and compact. A two-position pneumatic switch on the dash gives the driver manual control over the center and rear differential locks.
For 1986, Audi simplifies the limited-slip arrangement by installing Torsen differentials at the center and rear. A Torsen diff counteracts wheelslip with worm gears that bind when there are speed differences between the input and output. Initially, the torque split is 50/50, but Audi eventually moves to a Torsen differential that allows for a 40/60 front-to-rear torque split.
In 2010, a new “crown-gear” center differential in the RS5 finally allows variable torque splits, ranging from dryroad 40/60 front-to-rear to as much as an 85-percent rear torque bias and 70-percent front bias. This differential uses wet clutch plates activated by worm gears to progressively shift torque between the axles.
Also in ‘10, Audi introduces its torque-vectoring rear differential, which helps turn the car by selectively activating right or left planetary gearsets to step up the differential’s output speed to the outside wheel and “twist” the car in the desired direction. In lieu of this expensive, heavy differential—an option even on the most expensive models—Audi employs a brake-based, limited-slip strategy to help induce yaw.
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