After several years of dominance at Le Mans, Audi made the surprise announcement in December 2005 that its next entry would be a diesel: the R10 TDI.
This prototype wasn’t the first diesel to contest the famous 24-hour race but did become the first to win it outright, in 2006 and repeated the trick in the following two years.
This was an excellent marketing tool for Audi in an era when EU law demanded lower CO₂ emissions from car makers and lower tax rates were applied to diesel cars than their petrol equivalents.
As a result, at the beginning of 2008, Audi went through an all-too-brief period of unveiling bonkers, diesel-powered halo models that were directly inspired by the company’s Le Mans exploits.
The first of these to appear was the R8 V12 TDI concept, unveiled in January 2008 as “the world’s first diesel supercar”. This was a controversial idea, sure, but people were soon won over by the details.
Being propelled by a new twin-turbocharged 5.9-litre V12, the TDI concept produced more power (493bhp) than the 4.2-litre V8 in the existing road-going R8 (414bhp) and twice as much torque, yet it was also said to be capable of 25mpg (6mpg up on the R8 V8).
And, for a dose of supercar drama, it retained the same open-gate, six-speed manual gearbox.
Best of all, unlike most concepts, the R8 V12 TDI was fully functional. We flew out to Miami in April 2008 to drive it, and our initial impressions were good.
With a monstrous 738lb ft of torque on tap (delivered at just 1750rpm!), it was very fast indeed and due to the powerplant having so many different filters to make it emissions-friendly, which stifled almost all exhaust noise, it was very refined too.
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Our tester concluded that “this car could turn out to be the best sports car for everyday use the world has ever known”, and Audi was confident that production was 18 months away.
The hot oil-burners didn’t stop there. Soon afterwards, a range-topping variant of the youthful Q7 SUV powered by the same 12-cylinder diesel engine, complete with an R10 TDI-derived injection system and crankshaft, got the green light for production.
This was then followed by a third car, the lesser-known A3 Clubsport concept.