Car Throttle

Up until this point, Audi's A1 has been interesting, but not exciting.  The small avante-garde hatch, based on the VW Polo chassis, has enjoyed brisk sales in it's home country thanks to clever packaging and an appealing price.  But with engines topping out at a 185bhp 1.4 TFSI (like the one in the Skoda Fabia VRs our man Adnan test drove) and front-drive only, it's not really a hot hatch.  More like a warm hatch. Well, Audi finally saw fit to fix that.  Meet the A1 Quattro, all 256bhp and 4 driven wheels of it.  This will be a limited-production model, but it lifts the A1's performance from "meh" to "Oh hi there, you're pretty.  I didn't catch your name!  You have plans later?" Under

A station wagon?  Bleh.  Are we catering to the soccer mom market now?  No, no we are not.  What we have here is a shining example of a balanced combination of form, function, and utility:  a lightly modified Audi (B6) S4 Avant Quattro.  This little red wagon is owned by none other than Matt Welliver, who's 360+whp Cobalt SS Turbo I featured previously. Matt has made a name for himself in the Ecotec tuning community, one of the go-to guys for custom tunes to make big, reliable power out of GM's little overhead-cam four cylinder.  So what is he doing driving a big, naturally aspirated Audi station wagon? In his own words: "I wanted something more grown up, yet still entertaining."  I can't blame him. 

Audi's A1 subcompact is a neat little car. It's a nicely German take on the whole Mini Cooper/Fiat 500 segment - tiny but filled with aluminum and steel and Vorschprung durch Technik.  You can even get it with a powerful 180bhp 1.4TSI motor.  But up until now, the one thing it's been lacking was, oddly enough, four wheel drive. Considering Audi is a brand who's reputation is based around four-wheel-drive, that's sort of an unusual oversight on their part.  So it's not surprising that they would work quickly to fix this lack of Quattro grip.  Audi announced today that they're working on a 4WD version of the A1, and all of a sudden this overpriced subcompact starts to make some sense. The Quattro system in the A1

Autocar is at it again, stirring the pot with rumors about future vehicles. This time it is about Audi and the Quattro Concept at the Paris Auto Show. Speculation has been rampant for sometime about an Audi Ur-Quattro model based on the Audi A5. However, the Quattro Concept's introduction came as a surprise - and a good one. Audi has been ramping up its presence in the performance arena, and the Quattro fits in that. With all the performance models that have been approved at Audi recently, this report doesn't come as a shock. When the car came out, we guessed it had a good chance of seeing a limited-production run. The Quattro Concept looks pretty production ready, based off a variation of the Audi

Sometimes introductions are speculated about for a long time, until we practically know for certain what is going to be introduced before it happens. The Audi Quattro concept is a car that in idea we have heard a lot about. However, Audi surprised us with its appearance as a concept at the Paris Auto Show. And as always, it is a good surprise  - brought to us early courtesy of Motor Trend. The Quattro concept (hence its name) is designed to mark the 30th anniversary of Audi's famous Quattro all-wheel drive system. This is the car that has been referred to as the new "Ur-Quattro." Rumors have pegged it as slotting about the A5, while sharing components with that vehicle. As far as design, the Quattro mixes things

Apologies to third-wave Ska/Punk band Streetlight Manifesto for the title paraphrasal, but it seemed appropriate. I was driving around with a long-time friend of mine in North Raleigh when we came across what has to be the best night-time photoshoot location anywhere.  I can't say exactly what it is, except that it's a service bay at a local Audi dealer.  Oh, crap - I gave it away.  The lighting here was too cool to pass up, so we arranged the cars and did a little miniature photo shoot.  My friend's snazzy suit is entirely unrelated - he was headed back into Raleigh after a party, but it really seemed to fit the feel of the shot.  These images were shot with my Sony point-and-shoot as usual,

Perhaps the fact that most of my recent posts have been how-to articles tells you something about my preferred past time. While I like to write about cars, I love to work on them.  Sometimes that's reversed (see: Saab 900 water pump install), but besides driving, my favorite thing on this earth to do is turn wrenches on a car.  Now, if I didn't take forever and a day to do anything automotive-related, I could probably make some money with this.  But as a whole, I prefer writing about cars for a paycheck and wrenching on them as a hobby; I think if I added stress and deadlines to my wrench-turning escapades it would end in tears. So whenever I get the opportunity to work on

Sometimes, as I go through the internet I find something that's so damn cool it must be shared. This is one of those cases; I actually stumbled across this gem of a car on CarDomain's most excellent blog, and went in search of more information on this wicked custom Saab. All the images are from this build thread on the forums of savarturbo.se, which - although I don't know any Swedish - I'm going to venture a guess at being a Swedish tuning car forum.  The car started life as an early-build Saab 99, which had around 85 horsepower.  It's still got a Saab engine, but it's turned around backwards and mated to the Quattro 4WD system from an Audi 100.  It's hard to gather details

The five cylinder finally returns to the Audi lineup after an extended absence this year, under the hood of the hottest TT ever. The TT-RS is the pinnacle of Audi's small sportscar lineup, and it's packing the firepower to back up it's aggressive appearance.  With a 2.5L direct-injected turbocharged I5 and 340bhp, the TT-RS coupe will rocket to 60mph in 4.6 seconds thanks to Quattro four-wheel grip. Audi just released another batch of high-resolution pictures of the TT-RS, and I figure any reason at all is good enough to feature the TT-RS whenever possible. Although there's no word yet on whether Audi's going to import the hottest TT to the horsepower-hungry States, we can always keep our collective fingers crossed.  I mean, I'll never be able to

I know this isn't the first B7 A4/S4 I've put on Random Capture, but they're just the subject of so many good photographs. One thing most people don't associate with Audi Quattros: dry-pavement power-oversteer.  I'm hear to tell you, you're wrong. It helps that the RS4 has the 40:60 rear-biased power split and a 420bhp V8 to churn rubber, but seeing a sideways Audi is still always a surprise.  As an added bonus, check out the passenger's horrified expression - I see clean pants in his near future.  The clarity of this picture is surprising; it's a mark of great panning technique on the photographer's part.  Oddly enough, this image comes from the creative commons via Wikipedia.org -  I stumbled across it while trolling Wiki for