Audi Quattro GmbH

The smallest and cheapest Audi sold on these shores may be the five-door A3, but for Europe and many other parts of the world the Four-Ring Posse’s entry level model is the A1, a front-drive-only three-door subcompact cast in the Mini Cooper and Fiat 500 mold. It’s definitely a looker, but not much of a performer.

Of course, that’s nothing a metric buttload (which, as everyone knows, is equivalent to 0.861 of an Imperial buttload) of horsepower and quattro all-wheel-drive can’t fix, and fix it Audi has by creating the A1 Clubsport Quattro concept. Better still, this white mighty mite’s coming out party is this week’s Wörtherseetour, which is pretty much Woodstock for aficionados of Audi (as well as sister brands Volkswagen, Seat and Škoda) and is held on the Wörthersee (Lake Wörther auf Englisch) in Austria.

Say “station wagon” to the average American and chances are the first picture that pops into his or her noggin is a big, Disco Age American land schooner wearing green paint and mouldings and veneers made from only the finest plastic trees. With so many of today’s car buyers having spent their formative years in these motorized mastadons, is it any surprise contemporary wagons seem to be such a hard sell over here today? (The shortage of manufacturers willing to take the risk of selling them in this hemisphere makes it a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, but bear with us.)

In Europe, however, the honeymoon with the station wagon (or “estate cars” or “kombis,” depending on where you are over there) hasn’t ended. In fact, wagons are so popular in the Old Country that many manufacturers offer high performance versions thereof. But in the mid-‘90s, the species Stationwagonus Wickedfastimus as we know it today didn’t really exist. It took a collaboration between two then-distant (now less so) corporate cousins from the Fatherland to create this category. And the Adam/Eve of the segment they came up with – the Audi RS2 Avant – was a real humdinger.

Finally, Audi's prince of AWD luxury has arrived. When the A5 coupe debuted people fell head over heels for its long nose, muscular metal and supple interior. Of course any good coupe worth it's weight in salt needs a performance variant, so naturally there was an S-model, propelled by a 354hp V8. But what people really wanted was to see the A5 get the RS treatment. With a stance and design that looks formidable yet sleek, it was only fair to give it a proper engine and some real performance. The S5 was quick, but could easily fall victim to numerous sport sedans, coupes and imports.

Nothing ruins taking your fellow law buddies for a ride like having a 19 year old kid in a WRX hand you your briefcase. Well at long last, we have the official specs of the upcoming, beautiful, powerful 2010 Audi RS5.  It won't make it's public debut until the Geneva Motor Show next week, but because the brochure was leaked onto the internet last weekend, we can provide all the only data you need to know.

Back in the early 80s, my father brought me back a remote-controlled Audi Quattro car from his trip to Italy. At the time, I thought it was the coolest thing ever but really didn't understand the significance of that particular vehicle. All I knew was that it was a race car and it looked awesome. Since the debut of the Ur-Quattro ("Ur" meaning original)  at the 1980 Geneva Motor Show, Quattro (Italian for "four") technology has served as a game-changing platform for performance motoring. The introduction of the Audi Quattro transformed the company from a luxury maker of automobiles to a motorsports and rally car monster, who dominated the sport for many years after its debut.

The original Ur-Quatro sported a 2.1-liter inline 5-cylinder 10 valve SOHC engine complete with turbocharger and intercooler, a first for a full-time all-wheel drive car. With 197 bhp and 210 ft-lb of torque on tap, the Ur-Quattro sprinted from 0-62 mph in 7.1 seconds with a top speed of 137 mpg. All told, 11,452 example of the production “Ur-quattro” models were built between 1980 and 1991. The company also launched two additional versions of the Quattro - A1 and A2 - for competition in FIA's Group B motorsports, pushing the turbocharged inline 5-cylinder engine up to about 350 bhp.