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The hottest modern sports cars rendered as rally racers

The modern-day World Rally Championship a monumental amount of fun to watch – I should know, as I recently was lucky enough to head to the UK to watch WRC Wales Rally GB – but even the most monstrous of the current WRC cars are based on fairly pedestrian European hatchbacks. Back in the heyday of rally, the Group B era in the 1980s, much hotter cars were the basis of even more incredible competition machines, for the most part. Take the exotic Ford RS200, or the Lancia Delta S4 with its twin-charged engine. And the hatchback-based Group B cars were bonkers, too. So what would some of our favorite modern cars look like if Group B had never ended? A British site named CarWow hired an artist to reimagine everything from the Rolls-Royce Wraith to the Porsche 911 as a retro-inspired rally car, and they were kind enough to let us share the results in the gallery above. The gallery features an Alfa Romeo Giulia in Martini livery, an Audi TT in classic Ur-Quattro colors, a Fiat 500 Abarth sporting massive flares and a hood blister full of auxiliary lights, a new Ford Mustang in RS200 livery, a Lancia Delta in Alitalia colors, a Porsche 911 in Rothmans livery, a Renault-Alpine in classic blue, a Rolls-Royce Wraith tribute to the Jules cologne Corniche Coupe, and a relatively modern-looking VW Touran. So far, the favorite around the office is the incredible Mercedes-Benz S-Class that is an homage to the wonderful 300 SEL 6.8 AMG "Red Pig" that essentially put AMG on the map. Check out the gallery above and see which one you like the best. Related Video:

Audi prepping a flex-fuel A3 for Latin America

Volkswagen's Audi division hasn't fared well from its parent company's diesel-emissions scandal, especially in the US and Europe. In South America, though, Audi is set to unveil its first vehicle of the flex-fuel variety, according to Nseavoice. Perhaps the German automaker can earn some good karma down in the Southern Hemisphere. The model is the 2016 Audi A3, which is made in Audi's Brazil factory. The engine is a 1.4-liter variety, and it will be able to run on either conventional gasoline or ethanol, or a blend of both. The decision makes sense because ethanol is plentiful in Brazil since the government has long pushed for it and there's plenty of sugar-cane feedstock to produce the stuff. Audi can use all of the positive news it can get, especially in the wake of VW's diesel-emissions scandal. As many as 11 million VW and Audi diesels may have been fitted with software that cheats emissions-testing systems. One result from the scandal's proverbial shrapnel is that the Audi A3 TDI diesel was stripped of its 2010 Green Car of the Year Award by Green Car Journal. The decision marks the first time in the award's history that a winner was stripped of the honor. VW has a long history offering flex-fuel vehicles in Brazil. In 2003, the German automaker was the first to debut a flex-fuel engine, and within two years, VW's Brazil factories were making 300,000 flex-fuel vehicles annually. Other companies have since jumped into Brazil's flex-fuel fray, including Nissan and Honda.

Audi's CES interior concept foretells a screen-filled A8

Audi is once again offering a glimpse into its future interior-design plans at CES. The new setup is called Virtual Dashboard and is both an extension and an evolution of Virtual Cockpit, which made its debut in Vegas two years ago before winding up in the TT. While this interior mockup is pulled from Audi's recent E-Tron Quattro concept, our man on the ground at CES was told this is "very close" to the interior we'll see in the next Audi A8, which is due in a year or so. Virtual Dashboard is screen-heavy in stark contrast to Virtual Cockpit's single, driver-focussed gauge display. It keeps that and adds a pair of screens to the mix, all of them using OLED (organic light-emitting diode) tech. The central screen measures 14.1 inches diagonally and is curved with a rhomboid border; its AMOLED (active matrix organic light-emitting diode) allows for the irregular shape and curvature. Below that sits a more normal, rectangular screen; both are very well integrated into their surroundings. And as in many current Audis, the shift lever acts as a comfy wrist rest. On the top screen, drivers and passengers get what Audi calls classic information – navigation, audio, settings. The lower screen provides big favorite buttons and also houses on-screen buttons for the climate control. When it's called for, the lower display turns into an input tablet for handwritten entries, an evolution of the small separate touchpad offered in current Audis. The displays use swiping and other gestures familiar to smartphone users, which allow them to interact with each other, for example when swiping to accept a call and move its info to the gauge display. The screens provide haptic feedback that goes beyond what automakers are offering today. Our man at CES says button presses only result from deliberate presses of the screen, meaning you can rest a finger over your selection and it won't activate until you press, just like a real button. Novel. The steering-wheel controls also provide haptic feedback and have been simplified compared to what's on Virtual Cockpit today. When it hits production in the A8 and other vehicles, all of this will be built on the next generation of Audi's infotainment platform, which it's creatively calling MIB2+. It offers more computing power than the current MIB2 system, allowing it to run more displays and offer more connected services over an LTE connection.