Dan in St. Louis

That reminds me of a friend who was looking at my allroad, and noted that his neighbor who had a new Audi didn't know that "Quattro" meant he had AWD.

kurtatx

Agreed with this. Don't call the low end A4 "ultra" or call quattro with ultra "next gen quattro" or "next gen quattro" or just market the cars as "containing the next generation of quattro technology".

SYMAWD

They are using Ultra to mean efficiency.

superswiss

I don't think that's how Audi actually positions quattro ultra. It's not really the next generation quattro. Listening to some of the interviews, they are primarily going after the mainstream buyers, who traditionally opted for FWD due to higher fuel consumption concerns with quattro. Higher output engines and the performance models at least in the near future won't be getting quattro ultra. It's combined with the lower power/torque engines. I personally think the gains are marginal. 0.3 liters/100 km doesn't make much of a difference. Supposedly traditional quattro adds 0.5 liters/100 km over the FWD drivetrain, so quattro ultra adds only 0.2 liters/100 km in the most ideal scenario, so it's almost as efficient as the FWD drivetrain. For a dynamic driver where the system spends a whole lot more time in AWD mode, the savings are probably quite small. In the aggregate it makes sense for Audi, the more quattro ultra cars they sell, the higher the combined fuel and emission savings get.

JonDeutsch

Agreed, but efficiency may be seen as a more positive attribute in, say, Germany, than in other markets. #JustSaying

VM

How many mainstream buyers in North America actually buy FWD Audis?! If one was to show up at an Audi stealership in Arizona or Florida or California, would most A4s on the lot be FWDs?!?!? (I'm sure that the MBs/BMWs down the street would be RWD, while MB has basically discontinued RWD in Canada...)

(I can understand that things are different in the rest of the world, but I think that people buy FWD Audis there for cost reasons and I don't expect quattro ultra to be materially cheaper than old-fashioned quattro)

SFV A4

Yes. In the real world over here in the Southwest, FWD is the rule. Most customers are not enthusiasts. Most want prestige, a lower sticker price, and higher mpg's. This is what local dealers have stocked since the beginning.

VipinLJ

It depends I guess. Idk about Arizona, Florida or Cali (I'm guessing FWD though since it doesn't snow much there). Here in IL though, every dealership I visited only had Quattros.

kurtatx

Austin dealerships have about 50/50. I get Illinois getting all quattros: More profitable for perceived driving improvement.

VipinLJ

I haven't driven an FWD car in the snow but I know many people here who have and they all swear by AWD. So I guess that is another reason for having quattro here.