The Audi Quattro is being reborn with a supercharged V8 in a new project by British start-up Audacious Automotive.
It is the brainchild of Mac Zaglewski, a sculptor and classic car restorer. The first example of Audacious’s Quattro is a commission that is being produced with steel and aluminium coachwork, but a wider production run with carbonfibre bodywork is on the cards.
The car is in essence a merger of the performance and engineering of the B7-generation Audi RS4, launched in 2006, and the styling of the Quattro. The RS4’s chassis, engine and electronics are being married up to a modernised bodyshell from a Quattro.
The idea, Zaglewski told Autocar, is “an exercise of continuation, rather than modification”.
He said: “It’s a question of ‘what if? . If Audi carried on with the platform, would it end up close to this, and would it end up being a lightweight V8 rather than a heavy five-cylinder? We can never answer those questions. However, what we’re doing here is making sure that it feels how it should mechanically, with a modern sort of feel.”
Why a V8?
Although the original Quattro was defined by its five-cylinder turbo engine, Zaglewski and his team are using the 4.2-litre V8 that powered the second-generation RS4 on which the reborn Quattro is based.
The reasons for choosing the B7 are several, said Zaglewski, but the key was that it best matched the Quattro’s brief of being “very much usable, very much enjoyable and very much analogue”.
For example, basing the new car on the modern RS3 would not have met the brief, said Zaglewski, because it is “nowhere near as exciting” owing to its front-biased all-wheel drive set-up (via a Haldex differential) versus the RS4’s rear bias (Torsen differential).
He added that the RS3 platform would have restricted the car to an automatic gearbox, defeating the purpose of building an “analogue” machine. He claimed its chassis is less rigid than the RS4’s, while “the suspension is nowhere near as good”.
Using the RS4 platform therefore allows Audacious to produce a Quattro-style car that retains the appeal of the original, with a tactile manual gearbox, while gaining the rigidity and dynamic composure of a more modern performance car.
“I think there’s a growing group, or perhaps a group that always existed, of drivers who value this mechanical depth and authorship over the driving experience [compared with the digital experience] that modern cars offer, and that classic cars can come nowhere near to,” said Zaglewski.
Modernising the Quattro
Although “performance isn’t really the aim” for the Audacious Quattro, it will benefit from a number of upgrades compared with the standard B7 RS4. Chief among these is the addition of a supercharger, boosting its output from the standard 414bhp to a “minimum” of 600bhp.
Meanwhile, the new body will cut “at least” 250kg from the RS4’s original 1650kg kerb weight, which will contribute to a significant improvement In performance.
The new coachwork – dramatic as it will be, drawing on the S1 Quattro that competed in Group B rallying – will serve to meet an engineering goal, rather than being purely superficial.