Audi: Make A Sport Quattro We Actually Want To Buy

How much is too much? When it comes to power, there are plenty of new cars that appear to have excessive bhp figures. The numbers are drool-worthy and impressive, but not really rooted in the real world. And I think the new Audi Sport Quattro is one of them.

Okay, so it’s only a concept. But it’s the second concept so named, and there are strong rumours that this one is for real, a lightly watered down version heading for Audi’s shiny middle-class showrooms but wearing a distinctly upper-class price tag. £150,000 seems a conservative estimate considering how dripping in technology its drivetrain is.

Four-wheel drive, cylinder deactivation and a paddle-shift gearbox are the basics, while the mating of the RS6’s 552bhp biturbo V8 to a potent electric motor ensure Lamborghini levels of power. As a technical showcase, it's mega.

But is this what we really want from a reborn Quattro? The 2010 concept that preceded it was a rebodied RS5, a relatively real-world car with an eye-popping makeover. It was wonderful. But a complex supercar with a Ferrari price tag is something altogether different; surely Audi could have bestowed its heavy-hitting powertrain on an über R8, in place of the canned electric e-tron project?

What I’d really like to see from a new Quattro is an affordable hero that’s useable in everyday road conditions, not held back by them, a car to compete with the Toyota GT86 and Porsche Cayman but utilising Audi’s rich history of five-cylinder turbo engines and Quattro all-wheel-drive. The 335bhp unit from the Audi RS3 hardly feels old; mate it to a good old-fashioned manual for extra interaction (with the click-clack open-gate shift from the R8, please) and allow the bulk of the power to head rearward with the push of a Sport button. And keep the wheelarches nice and boxy.

Yeah, it sounds like a parts-bin special, but they’re pretty special parts, and that also results in the price being kept sensible. People can’t get enough of Audis at the moment, the brand’s sales figures as high as the number of Tweets about Miley’s twerking. A potent little performance car – one too focused to tread on the TT’s toes – certainly wouldn’t do the profits any harm. And it would make a great rally car…