S8 Quattro Tiptronic Bang & Olufsen Only 2k Miles Full Leather Package Carbon on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Audi A3 Clubsport Quattro concept bringing its 525 horses to W?rthersee

It's almost late May, and you know what that means: the last of the snow has melted, the Stanley Cup playoffs are in full swing, the flowers are blooming, and the performance-car faithful are descending on Wörthersee in Austria for the annual GTI-Treffen.
Not only is the Wörthersee Tour (as the automaker calls it) a chance for enthusiasts to show off their rides, it's also a prime opportunity for the Volkswagen Group to show some of its most dedicated customers what it can do. Past meets have given us such notables as the Audi A1 Clubsport Quattro, Volkswagen GTI W12-650 and Skoda Fabia RS 2000 Roadster, to name just a few. And now Audi has emerged as the first VW Group brand to reveal what it has in store.
It's called the A3 Clubsport Quattro, and seems to offer a pretty clear indication of what we should expect of the next RS3. The concept is based on the S3 sedan, but swaps out its 2.0-liter turbo four for a retuned version of Audi's sweet 2.5-liter turbocharged inline-five, retuned to produce a massive 525 horsepower and 442 pound-feet of torque.

Giorgetto Giugiaro sells shares in legendary styling house to Audi

Giorgetto Giugiaro undoubtedly stands among the great automotive designers of the 20th century, having penned the original Volkswagen Golf and Delorean DMC-12, among countless others. However, the great stylist is now longer an employee or even an owner of the company that bears his name. According to Automotive News, Giugiaro and his son, Fabrizio, sold their remaining 9.9 percent of Italdesign Giugiaro to Audi on Sunday, June 28, and the two resigned from the business the following day. The news about this just came out, though. The exact reason that the two men left the company hasn't been made entirely clear. According to Automotive News, a statement said that Giorgetto Giugiaro went "to dedicate more time to his personal interests." Italdesign Giugiaro remains open and intends to keep growing, though, the same announcement asserts. After stints at Bertone and Ghia, Giugiaro founded Italdesign in 1968. He created some masterpieces there, including '70s wedges like Maserati Merak, Lotus Esprit, and much more. The 2000s weren't so kind and 90.1 percent of the company was sold to Volkswagen Group in 2010. Former Audi design boss Wolfgang Egger took over styling duties there in late 2013, but he only lasted for about a year, leaving in late 2014. Since the sale, Italdesign has continued to work, including with the Gea concept at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show and the very mean-looking Parcour in 2013. Giugiaro's designs are still highly prized, as well. On September 5, Bonhams is auctioning the Maserati Boomerang concept by him and expects to get around $4 million for it. The gallery above offers a few more examples of his and Italdesign's concepts for VW Group over the years.

Looking for meaning in Audi killing off its $1m electric supercar

Audi's most ambitious - well, most expensive, anyway – electric vehicle is no more. After building fewer than 100 of them (perhaps a lot fewer), Audi has cancelled the R8 E-Tron. Maybe it was the million-dollar-plus price tag. Maybe it was the " supreme hand-built quality." Maybe it was the fact that a non-electric R8 could be had for $164,150. Whatever the reason, was killing the R8 E-Tron a good idea? The R8 E-Tron would have been a good halo vehicle for the brand Here's the case for this being a shortsighted move. As we all know, the VW Group – and Audi especially – is in the middle of an electrification kick, and the R8 E-Tron would have been a good halo vehicle for the brand. Instead, it can stand as a prime example of waffling on the promise of plug-in vehicles. After all, Audi used to be incredibly proud of the R8 E-Tron, even if it had a tough history. The whole program was an on-again/ off-again kind of thing, but with enough momentum to get the EV some time at the Nurburgring. With both Mercedes and the EQ brand and BMW with its i brand moving strong into EVs, letting the headline be "Audi killed an EV" is not exactly fitting. It's not like Audi was wasting time making a lot of these. The R8 E-Tron went on sale in 2015 to customers who made a special request for it, and apparently only 100 did. But let's stop there. Getting 100 people to plunk down a million dollars or so for a car totals up to be a lot of money. There's no reason for Audi to price the car this high (forerunner vehicle programs almost always lose money for a time, just ask Toyota RE the Prius), but it did. And $100 million (if almost 100 were indeed sold) is nothing to scoff at, is it? It obviously wasn't enough to keep the lines and tooling open for this limited vehicle, and that sort of opens up a bigger question. Does the end (the second end, really) of the R8 E-Tron say something more important about EVs? Are they becoming less exotic high-end fixtures and more everyday transport? In a world full of Bolts and Ioniqs and E-Golfs – so, the world of 2017 and beyond – does a super high-end EV have any meaning? Gas-powered cars have managed to pull this off for decades, with Lamborghinis and Maseratis surviving just fine even with millions of Corollas out there. In a more-developed EV ecosystem, expensive EVs like the R8 should be able to do the same. Just not right now.