Jan 18, 2022

1981 Audi Quartz by Pininfarina

When the well-known Swiss car magazine "Automobil Revue" celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1980, Sergio Pininfarina, who had a very good relationship with the publishers, decided to make a special birthday present. He thought of a concept car that was a fully functional and driveable Coupé.

When he wandered the 1980 Geneva Auto Show and saw the newly introduced Audi Quattro, he knew that this car should yield the base for his car. Luckily, Audi was quite happy to help and provided a complete (not counting the missing body ;) Urquattro in the summer of 1980. Audi always had an eye on the project during the conversion, but everything worked out fine. Pininfarina built a completely new body on top of the unchanged Quattro base. The body was tested in the wind tunnel and had a cD of 0,45. Despite being some 30 cm shorter than the Quattro, the Quartz, as this show car was called, had some room in the rear and even a trunk/boot. Air intake is between the headlights in the body "groove." The outlet is behind the front fenders, also in the groove. Instead of the headlights of the drawings, small 75mm DE lights were used, a novum for the time.

Using Carbonfiber and sandwich construction, the Quartz was 90kg lighter than the Quattro. Although the dashboard was thoroughly redesigned, the interior shows a modern design and is fully functional, as all the Quattro gauges were taken over. A special gag is the exhaust tip! The Quartz was engineered to full drivability and later was purchased by Audi. It was presented at the 1981 Geneva Motor Show. When in 1986, the "Automobil Revue" went testing the performance, they got a top speed of 217km/h (136mph) and a 0 to 62mph time of 7.1s.

Engine & performance: