2007 Audi A4 2.0t Convertible Cabriolet 2-door Fwd on 2040-cars

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New Audi Quattro concept coming to Frankfurt?

We first saw the Audi Quattro Concept at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, and since then we've been tugged this way and that by a series of rumors as to whether the car will be built or not, and whether such a car will live at the accessible or the exalted end of the cost spectrum. A report in Germany's Auto Zeitung from June restarted the fires of gossip with a report that a production version of the concept will appear at the Frankfurt Motor Show, and put it firmly in the exalted sphere.
Now, just a month from the show, Auto Bild has a similar report, sketching out an upmarket car but on a different platform. Back when we drove it, the Quattro concept was built on a spaceframe based on the RS5 platform and got its go from a 2.5-liter five-cylinder engine with 380 horsepower and 354 pound-feet of torque (the show car got 408 hp from a turbocharged five-cylinder). The June report from Auto Zeitung said this new reveal would be powered by a modified version of the twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8 from the RS7 that would put out something like 650 hp. Auto Bild, on the other hand, reports that the engine will be tuned to something like 600 hp and the new concept will ride on an "enhanced" version of the A6 platform.
Both reports agree that the car we'll see will preview Audi's new design language with "tauter, more angular lines." Lightweight and exotic materials will be used in efforts to reach a supposed target weight of 1,200 kilograms (2,640 pounds), down from a target of 2,900 pounds in earlier report. Auto Bild says that Audi still hasn't decided whether to make a production version, but if they are correct about the direction of the concept, any retail offering based on it isn't going to be cheap.

Audi investing $30.3 billion through 2018 for product expansion

How does Audi plan to reach two million units in annual sales and pay for the 11 new models it's adding to its lineup - an expansion that may include models named SQ2, Q9 and F-Tron? By increasing its investment to 22 billion euros ($30.3 billion US) between now and 2018. That figure represents an increase of about 500 million euros over the previously planned outlay, according to a report by Automotive News, and that could be due to Audi wishing to goad the momentum that pushed it to 1.5 million annual sales two years ahead of schedule.
It's also about staving off the challenges from BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Now that BMW has been able to turn some of its attention away from its "i" series of Megacity cars, it will reportedly spend more than planned in 2014 as it continues the rollout of ten all-new vehicles and 15 new-generation vehicles through the end of next year. Mercedes, having been dropped to third in the sales race, is preparing to add 13 new cars over the next six years.
Audi's money is going into technology, into product like the next-generation TT and the Q1 and production expansions and upgrades all over the world. The expenditure represents just under a fourth of Volkswagen's 84.2 billion-euro ($115.7 US) outlay devoted to taking the number-one global automaker title away from General Motors and Toyota by 2018.

Adam Carolla is world's the least helpful test drive co-pilot

If you were going to test drive a new car, who would you want to take with you? Your spouse? A friend? Maybe an automotive journalist? Well take it from us: there's one of us riding shotgun just about every time we go to drive anything, and we're not all we're cracked up to be.
How about a celebrity comedian? Well, that largely depends on which comedian we're talking about here. Some - say, Jerry Seinfeld or Jay Leno, for example - might be more helpful than others, being more or less schooled in the finer points of the modern automobile. Adam Carolla might seem like he belongs on that list too, but in this latest video for a friends at Edmunds.com, the one-time host of The Car Show on Speed TV seems bent on being as comedically intrusive as possible. Which may be funny, but helpful? Not so much. See what we mean in the video below, and the next time you go to test drive a new car, you just might find the world's most popular podcast host climbing in with you.