DriveTimes Five
The five coolest Audi racing cars of all time
Audi has built some very cool road cars over the years, but even the coolest of them is still nowhere near as cool as some of the utterly awesome racing cars the German company has built. Today we take a look at five of the best. Cool!
Sport Quattro S1
Not only is the Audi Sport Quattro S1 easily the coolest racing car Audi has ever built, it is also quite possibly the coolest in the world. Period. The Sport Quattro S1 was a development of the original Audi Quattro for homologation into the monstrous Group B rally series. It featured a 2.1-litre inline five-cylinder turbo engine that produced 225kW in the road version, while the competition cars produced 331kW, eventually growing to 441kW in the final cars. The body was made from carbon-kevlar and was wider and a drastic 320mm shorter than the original Quattro. Some versions were even fitted with a ‘‘power shift gearbox’’ – an early predecessor of the DSG transmission.
200 Trans Am
In what would seem to be an odd move when you consider its rally heritage, Audi decided to enter the American SCCA Trans Am series in 1988. The 200 Trans Am car ran a version of the last rally Quattro engine (2.1-litre five-cylinder turbo) and produced 375kW of power, driving all four wheels through a six-speed transmission. Hurley Haywood, HansJoachim Stuck and Walter Rohrl handled the driving duties and between them won eight of the 13 rounds that year. This prompted the SCCA to ban not only cars with AWD, but also cars with non-American engines, so Audi simply jumped to the more liberal IMSA GTO series with the 90 quattro IMSA GTO.
V8 DTM
Meanwhile, back in Europe Audi developed a Group A version of the Audi V8 to compete in the 1990 DTM series. The V8 (the predecessor to the large A8) would be up against the Mercedes-Benz 190 and BMW M3 (among others), both of which were much smaller and weighed around 300kg less. But the V8 had a couple of secret weapons – namely a quattro AWD system and a 309kW (later 340kW) 3.6-litre V8 under the hood. As a result the V8 dominated the 1990 and 1991 seasons, with Hans-Joachim Stuck and Frank Biella taking out the drivers titles respectively, making Audi the first manufacturer in DTM to take back-to-back titles.
R10 TDI
What’s that? Diesel? Cool? Yeah, we know, but the R10 TDI from 2006 is one seriously cool diesel-powered machine. The successor to the petrolpowered R8 that had won Le Mans five times, the R10 won its first ever race – the 2006 12 Hours of Sebring – and the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year, making the first ever diesel-powered car to do so. The R10’s 5.5-litre V12 is rumoured to have produced more than 520kW, although this was said to be unsustainable for the entire duration of a race, due to it clogging particulate filters. It was also said to weigh around 70-80kg more than competitors’ petrol engines, but none of this stopped it winning 36 out of the 48 races it entered.
Type C streamliner
While it wasn’t technically called an Audi, the Auto Union Type C wore the four-ring logo on its nose, so that is close enough for us. While all of the Auto Union racing cars were extremely cool, the Type C streamliner has to be one of the sexiest racing cars ever to turn a wheel in anger. Powered by V16 engine designed by Ferdinand Porsche, the streamliner was a full-bodied version of the Type C Grand Prix car designed specifically for maximum speeds and a world speed record attempt. While it was utterly gorgeous, it was also unfortunately deadly, with legendary German racer Bernd Rosemeyer being killed in one during a record attempt in 1938.