Audi has confirmed that the Volkswagen Group has killed off development of its ambitious 420 hp, four-cylinder engine.
In 2014, the German marque previewed its potent 2.0-liter in the TT Quattro Sport Concept and initially, it was thought the engine would go into production alongside Audi’s existing 2.5-liter five-cylinder.
While speaking with Autoblog however, Audi Quattro GmbH engineering boss Stephan Reil confirmed “the 400-horsepower EA888 engine is dead.”
The engine itself was designed by Freidrich Eichler, the same man responsible for AMG’s potent 2.0-liter turbo driving the A45, CLA45 and GLA45 models. Because of its size, it had the potential to be fitted into a wide range of Audi models, providing them with impressive levels of performance.
However, the Volkswagen Group ultimately decided it was better for Audi to develop its existing five-cylinder.
According to Reil, the turbo’d four would have been more expensive to engineer than the five-pot. He also suggested that the five-cylinder has more character, saying if the company developed the EA888, it still would have been “only a four-cylinder engine”.
While it would have been cool to see such an engine reach production, Audi’s five-cylinder has the potential for even more power and remains a unique proposition in the performance car market.
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