What's the news?
Audi is set to reveal its Sport quattro laserlight concept at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show (CES) from today (6th January). It's big news. The two-door show car will be shown with advanced LED and laser headlight technology, similar to the forthcoming Le Mans R18 e-tron racers.
However, it's the car, not just the tech, that interests us most. Ingolstadt has toyed with building a follow-up to the iconic rally-bred Sport Quattro from the 1980s. Only 200 or so of the uber-rare road cars were ever built for Group B rally homologation, and this concept hints at a probable successor.
Exterior
Audi's Vegas show car comes painted in Plasma Red, capturing the historical styling cues of the original Sport Quattro. Key to the Audi CES reveal, though, is the advanced headlights, combining matrix and laser technologies. The trapezoidal lamps are encased within dual headlights using a combination of LED and laser technology. The outer headlights rely on LEDs, while the inner elements use laser lights for the main beam. They're tiny too and Audi says three times brighter than LEDs.
Interior
Step inside and a large TFT display with high quality three-dimensional graphics awaits. It's a driver focused interior. There's a choice of buttons to control the hybrid drive, start-stop and Audi MMI to change the displays on the dashboard.
Mechanicals
Impressive is an understatement. The car is powered by a plug-in hybrid powertrain, with a twin-turbo 4.0-litre TFSI V8 petrol engine and an electric motor. Audi claims 0-100km/h in 3.7 seconds, a top speed of 305km/h and 700hp maximum output. Because it's a hybrid, it also quotes a staggering combined fuel consumption figure of just 2.5 litres/100km with up to 50km in electric mode.
Anything else?
On closer inspection, the Vegas-bound concept's measurements tally exactly with the RS 7-based Audi quattro concept shown in Frankfurt, last September. So a production decision (either way) on a successor to the snarling original may be closer than Audi will say.