We’re so used to hot Audi’s prefacing their numerals with S or RS letters that if we mentioned a model called the A1 Quattro, you might presume it was just a mid-spec version of Audi’s smallest car. In reality, it was one of the coolest-looking Audi performance cars ever built, and also one of the rarest.
Only 333 A1 Quattro hot hatches were built for the 2013 model year, and even today, a decade on, they still look tight. The combination of the white turbine wheels, rear spoiler, and contrasting black and white coloring makes it look like a tuner car or something Audi might have built for SEMA. Which isn’t far off, in a way. The A1 Quattro was a productionized version of the nutty A1 Quattro concept whipped up to wow the crowds at the 2011 Wörthersee VW festival.
Some of the concept’s more extreme visual details, its hood vents, Porsche 992 GT3 RS-style door recesses, and stripped, racecar-like interior with its fabric door pulls, didn’t make the cut. But at a glance, the street car looked identical to the show one, including the mandatory Glacier White paint and red headlight wings. Some of the components under the skin also had more in common with the tuning industry than regular A1s. The production model featured a stiffer bodyshell, a multi-link rear suspension setup from the TTS sports car, and a modified floorpan to accept the all-wheel drive system that the A1 was never designed to feature.
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Sadly, Audi didn’t give the A1 Quattro the earlier concept’s 493 hp (500 PS) 2.5-liter inline five, but the 256 hp (260 PS) 2.0-liter turbocharged four it did get meant that it was only almost as powerful as a Golf R of the time (266 hp / 270 PS) and much brawnier than the milder 231 hp (234 PS) Audi S1 that followed. It could hit 62 mph (100 km/h) in 5.7 seconds and top 150 mph (240 km/h), a strong showing for the time. Best of all, it came exclusively with a six-speed manual transmission.
If there was a downside it was the cost. Audi priced the A1 Quattro at more than £40,000 (equivalent to $55,000 at the time), which made it around 25 percent more expensive than a Golf R, and almost 70 percent pricier than the mainstream and barely slower, if far less cool, S1 that followed a year later. But while one of those early S1s is now worth around half of its £25k launch price, rarity has ensured A1 Quattro values have held up much better. One car with 13,800 miles (22,000 km) on the clock sold earlier this year for €56,555 ($60k). The car seen in the images here has covered a more substantial 56,000 miles (96,000 km) but it’s still likely to sell for the kind of money that would buy you a brand new 2024 Toyota GR Corolla in the U.S.
You can check out the full Collecting Cars listing here.
