Concept Car of the Week: Audi Avus (1991)

It will be 24 years at the end of this month since the Audi Avus quattro concept made such a deep impression at the 1991 Tokyo motor show.

It’s difficult now to appreciate the impact this car had at the time. In 1991 Audi was the maker of extremely well engineered and classy sedans, wagons and the odd performance coupe. Its flagship model was the V8 – effectively a 100 sedan with an engine formed of two VW Golf GTI engines with a common crank.

It was a handsome and swift machine but its presence went almost completely unnoticed. Audi had rather grander plans for its replacement – the A8 was to be constructed almost exclusively of aluminium and feature an advanced W12 engine, although the latter would have to wait (incidentally it was also formed of two Golf engines…)



In order to communicate the new construction techniques, Audi decided to create a show car – the Spyder concept we featured a couple of years ago. This extremely handsome sportscar was intended for production, but was destined to remain merely a prototype. But while its mid-engined format was new for the brand, its design did little to move the story along.

Enter J Mays – arguably the pioneer of harnessing a brand’s heritage to create new direction – and his bold interpretation of the Audi supercar brief. By looking back to the glorious pre-war Auto Union racers he discovered not only their use of aluminium, but also their mid-engined layouts that pushed the driver far forward ahead of hugely powerful powerplants that gave them such unique proportions. The viewer is left in no doubt of either the engine’s location or its size.

Not in modern history had a performance car been so proudly cab-forward – its roofline terminating ahead of the rear wheel, hood and windscreen one continuous arc. Yet rather than communicate its historical roots it spoke – indeed speaks – of the future. Its mirror-like polished aluminium surfaces are the epitome of truth to materials not only in their finish but also their volumes, such are the properties of the metal. Yet they look keenly forward rather than whistfully back.

And while its graphics may now look rather naive, particularly those at the front (the real exploration for this came with the similarly proportioned, but far more extreme Rosemeyer in 2000), the continuous arc of its side window graphic became a signature of the brand.

The Avus was never going to reach production, but it set the foundations for one of the most impressive, design-led brand-building exercises in history.

Tech Spec

First seen Tokyo motor show 1991

Head of Audi design Hartmut Warkuss
Lead designer J Mays
Length 4424mm
Wheelbase 2800mm
Width 1976mm
Height 1174mm

Engine 5998cc W12, 509bhp