Here is info on the car (if you haven't seen it)
Ladies and gentlemen start your Tivos! This season Sports Car Revolution (SCR) will devote thirteen television episodes to the STaSIS Audi A4 Ultrasport. SCR is a weekly half-hour television show on SPEED Channel with a focus on import tuning and the SCCA SPEED World Challenge Touring Championship. The host of the show is Tom Hnatiw, who is also the race track announcer for all SPEED World Challenge (GT and Touring divisions) races. In 2004 Sport Car Revolution Producer, Al Ayre, decided to take the show beyond the Japanese import scene. Daimler Chrysler's Neon SRT and the Audi A4 1.8t quattro wound up being the two finalists for 2005 SCR episodes. Audi Sport NA stepped up to support the program. STaSIS Engineering was selected because they run a proven World Challenge Touring race team as well as being a very successful Audi street car tuner. ACNA members Larry Boyer, Dean Treadway, and others helped STaSIS owner Paul Lambert make this project happen with Audi dealer donor car negotiations, logistical support, and all of the phone calls and meetings it takes to bring this all together. Testing was conducted just before winter snow closed SCR's test track in Dunville , Canada , for the winter.

Meanwhile, STaSIS also was already working on a marketing relationship with well-known Audi engine tuner APR, and a local dealership, Steven's Creek Audi in San Jose, California to put together a dealer performance option package for the Audi A4 1.8T with the Ultrasport package. For Steven's Creek Audi this idea was not new. Some twenty-one years ago this same dealership (under the name Anderson Behel Audi) was working with a local tuner to sell 1984 Audi 4000 quattros with an Oettinger tuning package installed. The Oettinger 4000 quattro was a very special and unique car then, as is the STaSIS Audi A4 1.8T Ultrasport today. What makes the package so attractive for many people is that car can be purchased or leased--with full factory warranty--already modified to a very well refined and developed package with insanely high performance capability.

Tuning a car for higher levels of performance always means some compromises must be made. The auto manufacturers' design engineers face these trade-offs on a daily basis while striving to create the best balance of performance vs. comfort as dictated by their customer base. The ultimate goal in tuning is to increase performance to suit one's own taste without paying a (sometimes severe) price in a reduction in some aspect of vehicle dynamics and/or comfort. Examples of how not to tune a car for performance are commonly seen on the streets of major cities every day. These cars bounce along (often with a loud "boom" as well) and just look like they are evil to drive in every respect. The tuning work performed on the STaSIS Audi A4 1.8T. Ultrasport is clearly done right. All of the modifications are very well engineered to integrate together and with the car. The entire package is race proven by the STaSIS SPEED World Challenge Touring race team. The car is the first complete car roll-out from STaSIS's new engineering center at Infineon ( Sears Point ) Raceway in Sonoma , California . The car has undergone more than 30 hours of track testing and more than 100 hours of street testing. The design goal was to create a vehicle capable of knocking heads with the best sports cars available at any price while matching, or even exceeding, Audi AG's high standard of fit, finish, comfort, and reliability. The performance figures provided by STaSIS are impressive to say the least:

0- 60 mph 4.9 seconds

60-0 mph 118 feet

Lateral Acceleration 1.2 g

Deceleration 1.3 g

Engine Power 340 hp

The following modifications transform a stock Audi A4 1.8T quattro Ultrasport to a whole new level of performance.

Engine:

I4 Turbo 1800cc - 340 hp/320 lbs-ft

Garrett GT28 ball bearing turbo

High flow MAF, fuel injectors, fuel pump

Inconel manifold, 3" downpipe, high flow CAT

Drivetrain:

High bias center diff 4:1

Limited slip rear diff 4-plate

Suspension:

Ohlins remote reservoir adjustable dampers

Adjustable spring rate coil overs

Adjustable anti-roll bars

Brake System:

Front: 14.5" vented floating rotors

Alcon 4-piston monoblock calipers

Rear: 12" 2-piece rotors

Wheels and Tires:

Forged alloy 18" x 8.5"

Dunlop Supersport 255/35ZR18

At first glance the car looks like any other red B6 chassis Audi 1.8T quattro with the Ultrasport package. When you look closer you start to notice the huge brakes, the intercooler taking up all of the lower front grill space, and the dual tips of the APR exhaust. The car sits a bit lower as well. I was fortunate enough to drive this car for a weekend while doing the photo shoot for this article. Special thanks to Paul Lambert and STaSIS Engineering for sharing their test/prototype car! When I first started the engine the burble of the exhaust immediately indicated that this car was really special. I was thankfully warned of the non-linear nature of the fly-by-wire throttle in advance, which was a good thing since I had to navigate through busy tourist-infested streets to get out to the highway. The first half of the throttle range really feels like an everyday Audi of comparable power and weight. The second half of the throttle range is where things change rapidly. Given the amount of boost, the relatively small displacement of the engine, and the weight of the car, the real sweet spot is between 3500 RPM and redline, which arrives in no time at all.

Acceleration is simply amazing. Power is, of course, a bit peaky but the car is very drivable and the nature of the high strung turbo engine is quite pleasurable. The brakes are beyond belief. Pedal feel was light and precise, with stopping power that is immediate and like nothing I have ever driven before. Cornering capability was something I did not push on a public road, but impressions are this car can surely rotate with the best of them. What was most amazing is the smoothness of the ride and the overall solid, polished, and, well, Audi-like driving experience. On relatively unsmooth California highways this car cruised down the road at 70-80mph every bit as smoothly as our 1995 A6 quattro avant (which is clearly not a sports car). The overall ride is much less jarring and bumpy than either my daily driver 1986 4000 quattro or garage queen 1983 Ur-Quattro for example. Driving around town was pretty much just like driving any other Audi. Having owned ten Audis over the past eighteen years, this car just felt right to me in every respect. I found no reason to believe this car would not make a splendid daily driver. In fact, I would love to own one! To achieve this ultra-high level of performance while keeping the car reasonable for day-to-day use is really an amazing achievement. Aside from the somewhat peaky power of the highly tuned turbo engine, and the beyond-amazing brakes, there are no clues from a driver's perspective that this isn't a car produced entirely by Audi themselves. Smooth, refined, well integrated. The tuning objectives were certainly met, and even exceeded.

To purchase or lease one of these amazing cars visit one of the following Audi dealers:

Stevens Creek Audi- San Jose, California, Scottsdale Audi- Scottsdale, Arizona, Fred Baker Audi-Bedford, Ohio and Pfaff Audi- Newmarket, Ontario, Canada.

STaSIS owner Paul Lambert's experience taping these episodes are best said in his words: "Take the two most intense work days you can think of, cram them into one, add catered food for nourishment and a cinderblock hotel for a couple hours of sleep and you are getting close. Oh, did I mention this is day one, you have seven more to go. What are we doing? We are bolting parts on the car, usually twice, once for the television camera and once for real. We have to keep the car progressing on schedule no matter what tool breaks or mistake we make because there is always a shoot waiting. The heavy mechanical work is scheduled into the evenings. The interviews are scheduled for the mornings. We break in parts and test the setup mostly at night and often in the rain. Daylight hours are for filming. Our glamorous set is a hanger at a decommissioned RAF base. Heat is provided by intensely noisy kerosene forced air heaters. Bathrooms and meeting rooms look to have been made by the high school shop class with nothing more than a few 2x4s and unpainted drywall. But when you look through the camera, man it looks like a professional place."

Be sure to tune in to the thirteen episodes of Sports Car Revolution on SPEED TV to see this transformation yourself. The show presently airs on Saturday mornings at 10:00 am and repeats the following Friday Mornings at 10:30 am . (Times are Eastern.) Check your local listings, or visit www.speedtv.com to find up-to-date listings throughout the season.

Special thanks to Paul Lambert and STaSIS Engineering for sharing information and the test vehicle for this article.

 

Woo Hoo, we're #7 we're #7.............