Audi Testing RS1, U.S Can't Have It

The minicar segment is growing in the United States with the Fiat 500, MINI and Chevrolet Spark entering the marketplace. It is still a small segment though, and one luxury automakers haven't dared to go into yet. Despite leaving us out of the plan for the A1, the car features heavily in Audi's global plans. It has been selling very well overseas, and new spy shots show that Audi is working on an RS1 model.

RS1? There isn't even an S1 yet; Audi could be skipping that designation. The RS3 is currently the smallest RS vehicle, and it is powered by the 350-horsepower 2.5-liter five-cylinder that is also used in the TT-RS. We get the TT-RS, but not the hotter version of the A3. That's down to the fact that it would cost too much.

The lighter RS1 would need that much power; we could see it getting an engine making around 300 hp. Developing the RS1 isn't as easy as it looks though; with all that power it needed Audi's Quattro all-wheel drive system. AWD wasn't in the plan originally for the A1, so Audi had to do the engineering work to make it happen. Because it did that the AWD option might be offered as a standalone option for the standard A1. You can check out a full gallery of the RS1 caught testing over at Autoblog.