VWVortex

View RSS Feed

Audi News Blog

Audi quattro Concept Feasibility Turns Up Short. Project Halted.

Rate this Entry
8 Comments
by
George@Fourtitude
on 03-07-2012 at 11:27 AM (7923 Views)


In a roundtable interview with quattro GmbH product boss Stefan Reil at the Geneva Motor Show this week, the German executive confirmed that a decision about the quattro Concept had been reached. Unfortunately for fans of the car, the car will not make it into production.

The large reason sighted was cost. In order to meet the extremely light weight targets of the project, the car would have been built entirely of expensive lightweight materials such as carbon fiber body panels and many components from aluminum and magnesium. Very little could have been shared from any current model Audi and that would have driven the price of this bespoke Audi coupe to a level where it was determined it would not have be viable and would have likely been north of the R8 GT.

This is an unfortunate turn of events for fans of the quattro Concept. Still, another rumor we heard at Geneva was that the design of the quattro Concept was heavily influenced by the new Audi design boss Wolfgang Egger. It wouldn't be all that surprising to see many themes explored by the quattro Concept implemented in future Audis.

Want to know more about the quattro Concept or see photos from Geneva? See the links below.

Photo Gallery: 2012 Geneva Motor Show

Fourtitude Drives the Audi quattro Concept
Tags: None Add / Edit Tags
Categories
Rumors, Renders & Spy Photos , Audi News Blog , Rumors, Renders & Spy Photos

Comments

  1. Microice - 03-08-2012 04:09 PM
    Microice's Avatar
    The higher-ups sure know how to spoil a dream. I thought this was the best car Audi has thought of after the R8 and it was going to be unique. They could have just made it very exclusive like 50 cars only.
  2. George@Fourtitude - 03-09-2012 09:46 AM
    George@Fourtitude's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Microice
    The higher-ups sure know how to spoil a dream. I thought this was the best car Audi has thought of after the R8 and it was going to be unique. They could have just made it very exclusive like 50 cars only.
    Mr. Reil seemed to infer that this was as much about prioritization as it was about finances. This car would have been built by his team and their responsibilities in the sheer number of RS cars in production and in the chute for production is exploding. They **could** have built just 50 and likely sold them all but it would have been a huge time consumer for their small team at quattro.
  3. Microice - 03-09-2012 10:37 AM
    Microice's Avatar
    @George. I don't think its a question of finance or manpower at the Quattro team bearing in mind that this is the ultimate RS model... This should be the top dog project at Quattro. Think of it; would you rather have 10 RS4s or 1 Quattro?
  4. George@Fourtitude - 03-09-2012 11:13 AM
    George@Fourtitude's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Microice
    @George. I don't think its a question of finance or manpower at the Quattro team bearing in mind that this is the ultimate RS model... This should be the top dog project at Quattro. Think of it; would you rather have 10 RS4s or 1 Quattro?
    I think they have to balance it. Profitability is a question and so would it make more for them if they built thousands of RS 5s or 10 quattros? I think everyone wanted to build it but it has to make sense also in a business sense.
  5. Microice - 03-10-2012 04:26 AM
    Microice's Avatar
    Here's a thought; why not base the next A5 on this concept's design? At least at the front and the lights. Maybe that would give us hope of seeing this baby on the road.
  6. George@Fourtitude - 03-10-2012 08:59 AM
    George@Fourtitude's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Microice
    Here's a thought; why not base the next A5 on this concept's design? At least at the front and the lights. Maybe that would give us hope of seeing this baby on the road.
    That's an interesting idea. I'm not sure they could stay very true to the proportions because it's very low and quite a bit shorter than the A5... think TT size.
  7. R5T - 08-14-2012 08:13 AM
    R5T's Avatar
    The nice thing of the quattro concept is, that it is Audi TT size.
    Developing it on a shorten RS5 floorplan will cost a fortune to get it production ready, so not feasible.
    But with all the possibilities of the new MQB floorplan it could easily put into production that way.

    MQB, Haldex 5, 2.5TFSI, 400+ hp.
  8. George@Fourtitude - 08-14-2012 09:26 AM
    George@Fourtitude's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by R5T
    The nice thing of the quattro concept is, that it is Audi TT size.
    Developing it on a shorten RS5 floorplan will cost a fortune to get it production ready, so not feasible.
    But with all the possibilities of the new MQB floorplan it could easily put into production that way.

    MQB, Haldex 5, 2.5TFSI, 400+ hp.
    There are two key problems with both the proposal and your suggested configuration. There's a theme of lightweight purity with the quattro Concept and one Audi engineers and planners will not deviate from. They want it to be the successor to the Sport quattro, meaning they more than likely wouldn't be cool with it being heavier. This means lots of carbon fiber and lightweight engineering. It's much less likely that they would develop such expensive components for MQB because if there is a way to re-use these, it is more likely done on more expensive models and RS 3 and TT RS, while at the high end of MQB production, are not all that high volume or high sales price in the grand scheme of things.

    Going back to purity, I think they'd also have a problem with the transverse setup. For one, Haldex is very good but it lacks all-time all wheel drive and Sport Differential components. You can't do an aggressive rear diff to make the car induce more oversteer or drifting. It's a great system, but it has limitations.

    Sadly, I think this is dead in the water for now. It may be shelved until MLB Evo comes out, or it may be shelved indefinitely. Last we'd heard the thought was that it was shelved for the foreseeable future and thus development on the car has ceased. Frankly, development may never have progressed further than the post concept production feasibility study.