2010 Audi A4 Premium Fronttrak on 2040-cars

Auto blog

2017 Audi A4 evolves into a larger, lighter luxury sedan [w/video]

Audi took the evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, approach when it came time to redesign the brand's A4. While the latest generation's look might not set hearts racing, a plethora of tiny tweaks by the engineers manage to make the the four-door larger, up to 264 pounds lighter, and slice the drag coefficient down to 0.23. Audi has made its modern reputation on the style and quality of its interiors, and the new A4 seems to make good on that tradition. In-cabin appointments and tech see a serious upgrade, including offering Audi's fully digital, Virtual Cockpit, instrument panel. In the US, the new A4 arrives for the 2017 model year offering power from either diesel or gasoline. The 2.0-liter TDI is essentially a carryover from the Audi lineup, but the 2.0-liter TFSI sees some big upgrades, including a new cylinder head. It's now rated at 252 horsepower and 273 pound-feet of torque. At launch here, all A4s get a seven-speed S-tronic dual-clutch gearbox. Front-wheel drive and Quattro all-wheel drive are available. For an added dose of forbidden fruit, you can check out the crimson A4 Avant in the gallery above the from Frankfurt Motor Show. Take a good look because this long-roof variant isn't coming to the US. Yes, we're listening to sad violin music, too. Although, the next Allroad is coming here eventually after that higher-riding wagon debuts.

Audi celebrates diesel milestone with triple-charged RS5 TDI concept

Diesels are typically slower than their gasoline counterparts, but leave it to Audi to turn that notion on its head. After dominating Le Mans and the international endurance racing scene under diesel power for the better part of a decade, the German automaker toyed with the idea of an oil-burning R8 for the road and ultimately made its first performance crossover a diesel. It's made the letters TDI a battle cry, and now it's yelling even louder with the RS5 TDI concept.
Set to be unveiled in a couple of days at the Leipzig Auto Show to celebrate 25 years of the TDI engine, the concept ditches the gasoline-burning 4.2-liter V8 in the production RS5 in favor of a 3.0-liter V6 twin-turbo-diesel with an electric supercharger added on to combat turbo lag. Output comes in at 385 horsepower and 553 pound-feet of torque, which means that while it has 65 fewer horses than the gasoline model, it packs a staggering 236 lb-ft more torque.
The result of the triple-charged madness is a 0-62 time around four seconds flat, trumping the 4.6 seconds for the road-going model. Top speed, of course, is electronically limited to 155 miles per hour, which is a bit of a shame because we bet it'd be a kick to pass a Porsche on the Autobahn in a diesel, now wouldn't it?

The real reason Audi races

The world has watched Audi have its way with endurance racing since 1998. What started as an intriguing race winner in 2000 that could be rebuilt so quickly that the ACO oversight organization changed the rules to slow Audi mechanics down, slowly morphed into a unique assassin, employing novel engineering methods to achieve series domination with its R18 E-Tron Quattro. Until recently. It's strange, then, that for all these years we didn't fully comprehend Audi's stated approach to motorsport. And so we sat down with Dr. Wolfgang Ulrich, head of Audi Motorsport, and Chris Reinke, head of Le Mans Prototype development while in Austin, TX, for the Lone Star Le Mans and World Endurance Championship race for answers. BMW, Corvette, Porsche, and Ferrari have healthy reputations, lucrative option sheets, and supported a robust trade in special editions by winning races. They have standalone racing divisions and they transfer the entire sheen of their racing endeavors to their road cars, a healthy part of what their customers buy into. Even though we know they improve their road cars with lessons learned racing, the belief is that they race because that's just what they do; those brand names mean racing. "Not one single euro is spent on a separate motorsports program." Yet Reinke said that for Audi, "Not one single euro is spent on a separate motorsports program. We [Audi Motorsport] are part of the Technical Department [of the road car company]. We are a pre-development lab for road-relevant technology." As in, Audi isn't racing out of core philosophy, it's racing only to improve its road cars. That helps explain why Audi's entire road car lineup doesn't bask in the same racing aura as those other brands even though Audi has been racing since it was called Horch. It's not a racing brand, it's a technology brand. Said Ulrich, "Instead of components, look at technologies – not lights, but lighting technologies, not engines, but engine technologies, like injection pressure technology is the same from the race car to the road car." That's nowhere near as exciting as, "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday," but it is arguably much more practical. Quattro is the most obvious example of racing tech for the street. For a less obvious one, Reinke said, "Audi Motorsport developed codes for computational fluid dynamics, and then we'd run the calculations on the Technical Department computers at night.