quattro

Technologies

Highlights
Models Emotions

The design studies

quattro is fascination Audi has long cultivated the emotional appeal of its successful technology with spectacular concept vehicles. The first of these was the Pininfarina Quartz, a show car for the 1981 Geneva Motor Show. The Italian design studio dressed an Audi quattro in a wedge-shaped exterior skin, with the exhaust pipes and the gas tank cover designed in line with the four-ring logo. The quattro Spyder presented at the 1991 IAA Frankfurt Motor Show was the first pure sports car of the post-war period from Audi and the first Audi to have an aluminum body. Weighing just 1,100 kilograms (2,425.08 lb), the lightweight, mid-engine car was powered by a transversely mounted production V6 generating 128 kW (174 hp) from 2.8 liters of displacement. A specially designed powertrain directed power to all four wheels. The interior of the timelessly elegant quattro Spyder featured a lot of aluminum parts, foreshadowing the character of the first TT. At the Tokyo Motor Show just a few weeks later, Audi sent up another rocket the Avus quattro. Plans called for a six-liter, 12-cylinder engine generating 374 kW (509 hp) to be installed longitudinally in front of the rear axle, with the cylinder banks arranged in the shape of a W. The gearbox in the complex quattro powertrain was located between the front wheels. The Avus quattro remains one of Audis most iconic designs today. The fenders above the hefty 20-inch wheels, the flanks and the drivers cockpit, which was shifted extremely far forward, form a shimmering wave of aluminum. Whereas the Avus quattro hinted at the streamlined Auto Union race cars of the 1930s, Audi took up this idea much more systematically in the Rosemeyer concept car, which was also equipped with quattro all-wheel drive. The mid-engine sports car was built in 2000 as an exhibit for Autostadt Wolfsburg visualizing a piece of the Audi brand DNA. A short time later, the Ingolstadt design-

ers presented the Steppenwolf concept car based on the A3 as an idea for a compact SUV. The Avantissimo luxury station wagon appeared in 2001 on the platform of the new A8 that followed soon after. The concept cars that stole the limelight in fall 1995 were rather closer to the reality of everyday driving: The TT quattro, in Coup and Roadster versions, was not far removed from the production version. Three additional show cars rang in the expansion of the model program in 2003. Audi presented the Pikes Peak quattro the precursor of the Q7 at the Detroit Motor Show in January. This was followed at the Geneva Motor Show by the Coup Nuvolari quattro, the forerunner of the A5. And in September the Audi Le Mans quattro became the star of the IAA Frankfurt Motor Show it looked almost exactly like the R8. In recent years, the primary purpose of Audi show cars has been to showcase new directions in driveline technology. The e-tron, one of the stars of the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2009, is a powerful sports car with purely electric drive. Its output of 230 kW (313 hp) is used to drive all four wheels in typical Audi fashion. 30 years after going into production, the quattro concept is more dynamic and emotional than ever.

Source: DVD quattro Highlights 2010 | Status: 03/2010