First Dance
With Audi, we made a plan for four years. I've grown up in advertising, where a six-month project feels incredibly long, almost the limit of what a creative mind can realistically forecast. What will I be doing in four years? I don't know.
This project was a childhood dream. Crazy powerful, with pure Group A and B DNA, a roaring five-cylinder sound, a wide body kit, and an ego as big and bold as the machine itself. I'm an art director for life, so it started with a moodboard on Pinterest and tons of sketches. I knew it was going to be dark, made with aramid, with aero covers on forged wheels. A mix of everything.
I was incredibly lucky to be let into the so-called Audi Secret Garage. It's not really a secret that it's extremely hard to get inside. You need approval from Ingolstadt PR, the head of Audi Tradition, Timo Witt, and a long, long list of people.
Same same but different
Being in Audi Tradition's sanctuary in Ingolstadt convinced me to merge colors and ideas from the dark, aggressive Dakar Audi RS Q e-tron, which won Dakar in 2024, with the Group B vibe of the '80s. A super raw motorsport dashboard with carbon, switches, and a single display instead of dozens of gauges with shaky needles.
Same story with the wheels. The original 16-inch rally quattro wheels from Compomotive MO, made especially for the car, were fine in proportion but too small for the brakes. 404 hp needs proper stopping power. You might say that Walter Röhrl somehow managed to stop the car with brakes fitted into 16-inch MOs. Yes, but it was Walter himself.
Non-Netflix policy
I've mentioned Walter Röhrl, so I have to mention Michèle Mouton. We're not Netflix, and we have no inclusive boxes to tick. I bring her up because I love the almost sci-fi idea of a woman driving one of the most brutal rally cars through gravel stages and beating the male heroes.
Unfortunately, we don't see that anymore. WRC no longer has gladiators launching themselves in rocket-like machines into stages filled with uncontrolled crowds, and thankfully we don't see the crowds either. Now it's an athletic, cold-as-ice boys' club with ultra-safe capsules that have little in common with road-legal cars. The era of homologation specials is gone.
The car we built pretends to be a rally-converted ur-quattro. It was born as an Audi Coupé with a 10v naturally aspirated engine. Quattro, though. A donor car with four-wheel drive is always better. It saves a lot of time, money, and effort adapting it for a driveshaft.
The body kit was crafted in aramid, Kevlar, using original molds for a Group A2 ur-quattro rally car. The engine comes from a five-cylinder RS2/S2, with forged pistons and a bigger turbo, and it makes 404 hp. Some people go for the modern 2.5L RS3 DAZA engine, but we decided to stay period-correct with the long inline-five, mounted so far forward that the radiator has to sit on the left side of the engine.
Yes, it affects the driving, almost like the opposite of a 911, with its engine hanging over the rear.
Test day
We had never driven this car before. Literally never. Until I sat behind the wheel, I had never even heard the engine run. So the first time was on track, a controlled environment to test something a little insane.
Helmets, harnesses, safety first. Then first gear, in an old original gearbox with a not-so-precise shifter. That was the first thing to be refined, along with the seating position and steering wheel.
During testing, we decided to remove the brake servo. It just didn't work. The rally DNA of the car takes its toll.
It was only the first drive. So far, so good.
