quattro® Highlights

Technologies Models Emotions

The design studies quattro is fascination – 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 generat- ers presented the Steppenwolf concept car based on the A3 as ing 128 kW (174 hp) from 2.8 liters of displacement. A specially an idea for a compact SUV. The Avantissimo luxury station wagon designed powertrain directed power to all four wheels. The appeared in 2001 on the platform of the new A8 that followed interior of the timelessly elegant quattro Spyder featured a lot of soon after. aluminum parts, foreshadowing the character of the first TT. The concept cars that stole the limelight in fall 1995 were rather At the Tokyo Motor Show just a few weeks later, Audi sent up closer to the reality of everyday driving: The TT quattro, in Coupé another rocket – the Avus quattro. Plans called for a six-liter, and Roadster versions, was not far removed from the production 12-cylinder engine generating 374 kW (509 hp) to be in- version. Three additional show cars rang in the expansion of the stalled longitudinally in front of the rear axle, with the cylinder model program in 2003. Audi presented the Pikes Peak quattro – banks arranged in the shape of a W. The gearbox in the complex the precursor of the Q7 – at the Detroit Motor Show in January. quattro powertrain was located between the front wheels. The This was followed at the Geneva Motor Show by the Coupé Nuvo- Avus quattro remains one of Audi’s most iconic designs today. lari quattro, the forerunner of the A5. And in September the Audi The fenders above the hefty 20-inch wheels, the flanks and the Le Mans quattro became the star of the IAA Frankfurt Motor Show – driver’s cockpit, which was shifted extremely far forward, form a it looked almost exactly like the R8. shimmering wave of aluminum. In recent years, the primary purpose of Audi show cars has been Whereas the Avus quattro hinted at the streamlined to showcase new directions in driveline technology. The e-tron, race cars of the 1930s, Audi took up this idea much more system- one of the stars of the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2009, is a power- atically in the Rosemeyer concept car, which was also equipped ful sports car with purely electric drive. Its output of 230 kW with quattro all-wheel drive. The mid-engine sports car was built (313 hp) is used to drive all four wheels – in typical Audi fashion. in 2000 as an exhibit for Autostadt visualizing a piece 30 years after going into production, the quattro concept is more of the Audi brand DNA. A short time later, the Ingolstadt design- dynamic and emotional than ever.

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