Audi announced today that its Quattro GmbH performance and technology division will officially be renamed Audi Sport GmbH. The name change is the first since the division’s introduction in 1983, and it should more clearly describe its function within the company and remove confusion with the Quattro all-wheel-drive system offered on all Audis, sporty or not.
With its new name, Audi Sport will continue to handle the brand’s RS models, the R8, customer race cars, customized road cars, and Audi Sport lifestyle products. While the clearer new name is good news, we’re more interested in the division’s announcement that it will release eight new cars in the next 18 months.
The company didn’t reveal exactly which cars these will be, but it did clarify which cars Audi Sport is currently responsible for. These include all variants of the
RS 3,
RS Q3 crossover,
RS 6,
RS 7,
TT RS,
R8, and
S8 plus. Since the
A4/S4 and
A5/S5 models were just redone, we can guess that they will be next on the list for RS-ification, resulting in new RS 4 and RS 5 models. If that includes Sportback, coupe, and cabrio versions of the RS 5, and an RS 4 sedan and Avant, that would put us up to five already. Both the
A6 and A7 have only seen a minor refresh recently, so it’s likely that we’ll see new versions of each soon followed by their own RS variants. However, whether those fit in the 18-month window will depend on how soon we see the standard models.
Our other guesses are a bit fuzzier, and based completely on speculation. We could imagine one or two ultra-high-performance R8 models being announced – something like
the last-gen R8 GT, perhaps offered in coupe and spyder forms – as well as RS versions of the other members in Audi’s crossover fleet, the
Q5 and
Q7. It’s also possible one of the models could be a new customer race car, since Audi Sport currently builds and sells the R8 LMS race car. At the very least, we know the Audi Sport folks are busy and people will no longer get them confused with an all-wheel-drive system.
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