- Audi’s students have built another concept car, and this time it’s a throwback to the IMSA racers of the 1980s.
- bJust like the Audi RS3, the GT50 concept has a five-cylinder turbo engine under the hood.
- The concept is neatly executed and actually runs and drives.
Working for a German car manufacturer doesn’t sound like it should be this much fun – despite all the serious engineering involved – but Audi does things differently. In recent years, young apprentices training at Audi’s headquarters in Neckarsulm have built a series of wild concept cars, all fully functional and very, very cool. The latest to hit the market is called the GT50, and it’s all about paying tribute to the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the Audi inline-five.
First a brief summary of what Audi students have built up over the years. Five years ago, a dozen of them built a wild retro-futuristic hot wagon version based on the RS6, called the RS6 GTO. Two years ago it was a scruffy little terrier of an EV, like a Blade Runner version of the NSU Prinz, a small runabout from the 60s and 70s from a company that would become one of Audi’s four rings.
This year there are fourteen students, and they have converted an RS3 with five turbo engines into something that resembles one of the IMSA racer Audis from the 1980s. It took six weeks to build, has the real roof of an Audi 80 and is full of racing-inspired touches.
Every part of the car has been reworked, from a stripped-out interior to all-new body panels. With its clean surfaces and impossibly large wheels, it looks like it has escaped from a video game, but it really runs and drives. The power should be around 395 hp, thanks to the Audi RS3 chassis underneath.
Perhaps most exciting is that Audi isn’t just using these one-off builds to show what its students can do. They are real concepts and can show the way forward. The RS6 GTO concept actually found its way into production as the RS6 GT. The GT50 may be too wild for production, but an RS3 variant with some similar retro themes may be on the table.
With its X-shaped headlights and taillights, this car looks like something DJ Marshmello would drive. If you don’t know who that is, the kids who built this car probably do. It’s great to see a bunch of twenty-somethings harking back to Audi’s heritage and dragging it into the mid-20s. When this concept was unveiled in front of some 3,200 Audi employees, the crowd went wild. It turns out that the children are doing well.
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, BC, Canada. He grew up on British cars, came of age in the golden age of Japanese sports compact performance, and started writing about cars and people in 2008. His special interest is in the intersection between man and machine, whether it concerns the racing career of Walter Cronkite or the half-century-long obsession of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to constantly buy Hot Wheels.
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