Over the years, I’ve had opportunities to drive a handful of Audi prototypes and concept cars. It’s not a deep catalogue, mind you, but deep enough that I had some basis for comparison the moment I slipped behind the wheel of the Audi quattro Concept back in 2010 for a short spin.
Editor’s Note: This story is Part 3 in the quattro Redux Series, or direct links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
What I learned that day in Malibu was that the Audi quattro Concept was, much like the Concept C driven by the press most recently, more of a driver’s car than I would have expected.
Peter Seizinger, quattro GmbH’s quattro Project Manager at the time, pointed out that he and his team had just a few weeks to prep the car before journalists arrived. Swapping the uber-expensive one-off show stand alloy wheels for stock 20-inch RS 5 rotor alloys (they needed at least 19s to clear the car’s carbon ceramic brakes) and fitting Dunlop SP Sport Maxx GT tires helped make the car capable of speeds up to 100 mph.
In that moment, Peter was about to let me loose on Decker Road, a winding stretch of tarmac through a canyon just north of the home on the Pacific Coast Highway. LA driving enthusiasts likely know Decker Canyon well, but it was new to me when I arrived to meet the Audi team at a luxurious rental home with an oceanfront view.
This was still a concept car, so heading up Decker wasn’t as simple as bidding a spirited exit from Malibu Cars & Coffee. Even so, as long as Peter rode shotgun and I waited for the CHPs to temporarily clear traffic, I was informed I was good to go. Seizinger didn’t have to ask me twice, though he did have to show me how to open the car’s flush door handles.
You’ll have to forgive me. This was December 2010. Cars with proximity-driven flush door handles simply hadn’t hit the market yet. Such tech was concept car stuff, and this was, well… a concept car. Passing my hand across the handle once made it pop out, exposing a machined four-ring logo on the top. Passing my hand across it a second time opened the door.
Inside, the interior design had been greatly simplified. Audi’s rotary MMI controls of that era were retained on the center console near the start button, but unnecessary MMI controls and even the secondary MMI screen were removed, with all functions moved to the main instrument cluster. As with the ur quattro, the remaining controls were pared down to only the essentials. Each was button-based and mounted in vertical rows on either side of the main cluster, clearly inspired by the ur quattro’s B2 dashboard layout.
The cluster itself represents another moment in Audi’s tech history. The 2010 quattro Concept was effectively teasing the NVIDIA-powered virtual cockpit design that would debut in the TT Mk3 and R8 Mk2. Ubiquitous today, this screen-as-instrumentation layout could cleverly switch from an ’80s-style digital display (a nod to the ur quattro’s optional “digifiz” cluster) to analog gauges as needed.
Like the Atari-era digital callback, the seats also nodded to the car’s spiritual past. Tan Sparco-sourced leather seats were less heavily bolstered than the Recaro shell seats found in Audi’s contemporary performance models like the R8 GT. Perhaps that was stylistic, but it was also functional. Built with lightweight carbon fiber frames and featuring power adjustment, the seats also included integrated three- and four-point belts that mounted to an exposed carbon fiber rear chassis cross-brace. Aggressive bolsters or not, they offered ample grip, though no rear seats sat behind them.
As with nearly everything else in the car, the steering wheel and shifter were crafted from alloy, leather or carbon fiber. The quattro’s fully round wheel returned to basics, skipping the flat-bottom trend seen in the TT and R8. The shifter sat higher and felt more akin to the position found in the quattro’s earlier forebears.
Being a concept car, there was no key. The engine fired via a standard Audi starter button finished in red. The then-advanced virtual cockpit display came alive and proved surprisingly functional for a one-off.
Engaging first gear, we crept down the steep driveway of the Malibu home that served as the Audi team’s temporary base. The car creaked slightly, and I found myself trying to decide how best to describe what I was experiencing. “Concept car” was accurate but not exactly helpful to anyone who has never driven one.
Looking back at my notes, “kit car” came to mind, but the quattro Concept was far more buttoned up than any Fierrari or Lambiero. This was before vintage icons were being painstakingly reimagined into modern rolling art. Singer Vehicle Design had only just opened its Sun Valley location a year earlier and was barely known, so reinventing an icon like the quattro still fell squarely to manufacturers.
The term “race car” struck the right balance. With a structure of aluminum and carbon fiber, the one-off quattro Concept was both extremely rigid and still very much a prototype. Some elements weren’t as damped as in a production car, while others felt extremely inflexible, so the occasional squeak or rattle didn’t signal anything loose or poorly assembled.
Turning onto Pacific Coast Highway, I followed a CHP escort to the foot of Decker Canyon, then waited with Peter as the officers cleared the road. Drivers passing by slowed to gawk at the Audi concept. Hardly surprising.
Seizinger pointed out that while the engine was from the TT RS and the transmission from the S5, the remaining drivetrain was straight out of the RS 5. This meant carbon ceramic brakes and a crown gear center differential. The team skipped the torque-vectoring sport differential because, like the RS 5’s S tronic gearbox, it added unnecessary weight.
Peter also mentioned there was no ESP. Even still, he told me to feel free to push the car. I was surprised he didn’t follow that up with a reminder not to stuff his priceless prototype into Decker Canyon’s jagged cliff faces.
One thing he did note was that despite the quattro Concept’s short wheelbase, its turning radius was still significant. There was a particular section of back-to-back 180-degree turns where I was to stay wide and not cut the apex to avoid rubbing tires on expensive chassis components. Noted.
Then came the all-clear over the radio. I engaged first and headed up the hill. Predictably, the car’s power delivery differed from the high-revving V8 of that year’s RS 5. Also predictably, it was nearly identical to the 2010 TT RS. It felt a bit quicker than I remembered the TT RS, and its power delivery carried hints of the Sport quattro’s character.
Running the quattro Concept through its rev range, the 2.5 TFSI didn’t feel anemic before suddenly whacking you with boost like the original Sport quattro, but I did find myself mindful of keeping the revs up. Real power didn’t begin before 2500 rpm, which was low compared to the Sport quattro but quite high versus the shift-friendly torque of the RS 5’s V8. Once the boost hit, the car was genuinely quick.
As revs rose, the five-cylinder soundtrack was distinctive and cool. It didn’t have the deep baritone of the RS 5’s 4.2 V8. Shifts were punctuated with wastegate chatter—not a chirp like Audi’s old IMSA racers, but enough to distract you from any longing for big-displacement theatrics.
In today’s world of biturbo V8s with electric assist or full EVs with instant torque, the delivery and sound feel downright quirky. Even then, it stood out. Remembered today, it’s the greenest grass on the other side of the fence.
Back then, Audi said the car could hit 0–60 mph in 3.9 seconds. I doubt I came close, not wanting to manhandle a one-off, though perhaps I was too gentle. Midway up the climb, Seizinger reminded me I could push harder. I obliged.
In the tighter turns, I wasn’t shocked when I overcompensated with the brakes. Audi’s carbon ceramics of that era were touchier than their steel offerings, and the combination of massive brake hardware and featherweight chassis amplified that.
Turn-in was excellent. The light weight and short wheelbase helped immensely. Generous contact patch and low mass improved steering feel noticeably.
Shifts were quick, direct and perhaps shorter in throw than in the S5, from which the gearbox came. Given Decker Canyon’s tight layout, I rarely left third gear during my runs. I was allotted just two quick trips up and down the canyon, but they were enough. The quattro Concept was fast, but in a more engaging way than many modern supercars. It made me think—about revs, about rhythm, about the future of performance as the 2010s loomed ahead. And I thought about what it would take to convince Audi to build the thing.
EPILOGUE
It was almost inevitable that the quattro Concept would be well received when it debuted alongside the e-tron Spyder concept on the Paris Motor Show stage in the autumn of 2010. This was Audi’s first modern revisitation of its most iconic post-war production car—a car that wasn’t exactly pretty, but undeniably awesome. This time, Audi aimed to make it both state-of-the-art and genuinely handsome, something the company of the 1980s simply couldn’t have achieved. The goal was to use heritage as a springboard for a supercar of the future aligned with Audi’s move toward downsizing. No surprise: public outcry for production was loud.
Showing two concepts like that, it’s easy to see how leadership of the company was likely split – one a true-to-roots internal combustion car and light weighting experiment and the other set on imagining a small sportscar envisioned for a future of electromobility. They were a curious pairing.
At the time, most amongst Audi’s leadership—board members, bosses, designers and engineers—were all saying the same thing. They wanted to build the quattro, provided the business case worked. And there lay the challenge.
Peter Seizinger shared with me that day in Malibu his belief that if Audi were to build the quattro, they would want to match the concept’s weight and power. That seemed achievable. Audi in the 2000s had proven its ability to deliver production cars largely true to their concept car form.
But matching that weight meant an aluminum chassis and extensive carbon fiber—materials that were costly even before considering that the interior lacked the usual parts-bin shortcuts. Even the R8 relied heavily on TT components for buttons, knobs, clusters and radios.
Then there was the 5-cylinder TFSI. It was already in production in the TT RS, but fitting it longitudinally was another matter. It was taller and longer than the V10—an engine that does not fit in the RS 5. Making the five-cylinder work while meeting pedestrian impact standards might have been the biggest hurdle, though Seizinger didn’t seem deeply concerned about it.
He also mentioned the transmission and Audi’s Sport Differential. The concept kept things simple but was meant to showcase advanced tech. Adding an S tronic and the Sport Differential would make it more of a technology leader and faster on track, but they would also add weight—and dropping the manual likely wouldn’t sit well with purists.
Then came product positioning. If the car cannibalized any existing Audi model, it wouldn’t make sense. Moving it upward was possible, but only by raising price. That wasn’t ideal for fans dreaming of an affordable quattro, but such pricing could help justify the exotic materials and development costs.
One internal proposal was to match Sport quattro production numbers: 224 units. That run had been just enough to homologate Audi’s brutal short quattro for Group B rallying. Selling 224 examples of a modern quattro Concept would have been theoretically easy given its exotic nature, though the price was expected to exceed even the R8 GT. Audi built 333 examples of that car, and it was based on an existing model.
Audi could have also upped production to around 1,000 units. That still kept the car exclusive but would have allowed pricing closer to the R8 V10.
Would the market have paid for a 5-cylinder car with exotic car pricing and such a small cylinder count? Given the car never made production, the Audi board likely concluded the answer was “no”. Fast forward to today’s gilded era of bored billionaires stroking checks to Gordon Murray for an F1 throwback or half-million dollar 911 S/Ts, and you have to wonder if the quattro concept was simply a decade and a half too early.
Looking back now as Audi prepares new models like the Concept C, it’s obvious how much inspiration the newer car draws. Like the Concept C, the quattro Concept was a call toward the same Radical Simplicity that Massimo Frascella champions today.
Yet the 2010 neo-quattro combined that simplicity with blank-check engineering—a multi-material lightweight platform, a manual transmission and a true-to-form turbocharged five-cylinder.
It’s funny then. Unless they go into production, concept cars tend to be forgotten and not live on as legend. We barely remember the e-tron Spyder concept that debuted alongside the quattro, or even the Sport quattro concept that would follow – a bigger and busier run at the quattro reimagining mission. It was powered by the 4.0-liter biturbo from the C7 RS 7, paired with plug-in hybrid power for 700 hp and 590 lb-ft of torque through the RS 7’s 8-speed torque converter automatic. There was a lot of radicalness in that drivetrain, but simple and distilled it was not. Despite the 2013 Sport quattro concept’s searing Energy Yellow paint, it was also unfortunately forgettable.
And maybe that’s the lasting lesson. The quattro Concept lives on not just for its shape, but because it captured something Audi rarely allows itself: a moment of unfiltered clarity. It showed what a modern quattro could be if heritage, engineering and desire were given free rein. A decade later, as Audi searches for a new design language and a new identity, this short-lived concept still whispers the same message: sometimes the simplest ideas are the ones we remember most.
REFERENCE INFORMATION
2010 Audi e-tron Spyder concept
2013 Audi Sport quattro concept
PHOTO GALLERY
