- 94
- Italy
Manufacturer: Audi
Country: Germany
Gran Turismo body class: race-modified car
Gran Turismo engine class: Turbo
Layout: 4WD
Power: 650 hp @ 7700 rpm
Displacement: 2144 cm³
Weight: 1072 kg
Background
It's 1986, and Audi has achieved legendary status in Europe after their successful return to motorsports with the quattro, an immensely popular and influential rally car that nothing short of redefined rallying forever, to the point that thirty years later "rally car" is still synonymous with "all-wheel drive". In the USA, however, rallying has never been particularly popular, and even dominating the Unlimited class at Pikes Peak every year since 1982 didn't make Audi particularly popular with the average American car enthusiast.
What do Americans like? Oval racing of course! As a publicity stunt then, Audi set to make a NASCAR-spec car out of the Audi 200 quattro that was already being promoted in Europe as a (subpar) Group A rally car.
The body was lightened — Kevlar bumpers, aluminum doors, plastic windows — and lowered. Aerodynamics were improved with a front spoiler and a small rear spoiler, for the best balance of downforce (on oval turns, up to 2.2 g!) and drag coefficient (0.33). The whole car was made asymmetric to handle the huge lateral load (1.6 g) in the steep banked turns of American super-speedways: asymmetric suspensions, stiffer on the right (i.e. outer) side; asymmetric drivetrain, moving engine, gearbox, drive shaft and differentials off-center by 5 cm to the left; fuel tank, oil reservoir and battery moved to the left side. The final left:right weight distribution was 53:47.
The engine was the usual Audi inline 5, with turbocharger and intercooler (2 bar boost!) and surprisingly few other changes, among which titanium rods and a new 25 valve (!) head, for a power of about 650 hp. Special tires were provided by Michelin, successfully bench-tested for speeds up to 450 km/h.
The beast was rebadged "5000 CS" to promote the American version of the Audi 200, taken to the Talladega super-speedway in Alabama and entrusted to retired Indy 500 legend Bobby Unser. It maintained an average speed of 332.853 km/h, setting a new world record for four wheel drive cars, and reached a top speed in excess of 350 km/h, results that would have made it technically competitive in NASCAR — that is, if the car was pretty much redone from scratch to comply with competition rules, including discarding the engine and transmission that were Audi's pride and kind of the whole point.
In 1988 Audi would eventually steamroll through Trans-Am (where they didn't have to sacrifice what made an Audi an Audi — until they dominated the class so thoroughly 4WDs and foreign-made engines were banned) with an evolution of the Talladega special, the 200 turbo quattro Trans-Am, but in 1986 they were content enough with exploiting the record-setting run for a publicity tour.
What this suggestion is about: premium model of the Audi 5000 CS quattro "Talladega"; the car probably doesn't even exist anymore, so I don't hold much hope for this. There are photos of the interiors, but probably not enough to model them.
Image gallery
Sources:
- Jens on www.AudiStory.com, Audi at Talladega (via Web Archive)
- Italian Wikipedia, Audi 200; Impegno sportivo
- English Wikipedia, Talladega Superspeedway; Records
- Ned Ritchie on INTENDED ACCELLERATION, Talladega Audi
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