This Audi, the 034 Motorsport entry, is looking to make it two European-bred USCC winners in a row. The 034 Motorsport Audi shares the Quattro all-wheel-drive system found in Brent Mattraw's '98 S4 that took top honors last year, but the 034 crew is playing the old school card, bringing a '90 Audi Coupe Quattro to the party. In traditional old-school style 034's Javad Shadzi has taken a V-8 from a bigger Audi offering and dropped it into the unassuming coupe. Can you say sleeper?
"It's the wow factor," says Shadzi. "It's not often you see a clean street car with such an exotic, powerful engine. The S8 was a flagship performance model for Audi in the late 90's, featuring 360 bhp and 32 valves with a refined, lightened valvetrain capable of revving past 8,000 rpm.
The motor is pure magic in the small, not too heavy Coupe Quattro chassis, with tons of traction and beautiful bodylines. It really is a wonderful looking and stout performing street car."
Shadzi understands the importance of balance in the multi-event USCC. "I feel this car is an overall good combination of mods that should do well in this competition, not extreme in any one area, but strong in all areas."
The 034 Motorsport Audi has functionality to go with its 'fury factor.' The car still features a full leather interior, fully functioning air conditioning, ABS, cruise control, and all its factory features. The biggest thing missing is its original five-cylinder engine, which has been swapped for V-8 power, turning this 164 bhp weakling into a real beach bully.
Performance wise, this car has an awesome combination of power, handling and traction. It will run fast quarter-mile times, tear up the road course, and will perform very well in all the other performance contests. However, the jury is still out on whether the naturally aspirated Audi S8-derived engine has enough juice to outdo the heavily boosted STI, 350Z, EVO, and GT-R entries that have arrived this year.
The Audi Quattro Coupe is a return to roots for Shadzi, whose first car was an '84 Audi 4000 Quattro. "I became a tuner to create solutions. I've always been passionate about the Audi Quattro in its various forms, but nobody created any really good tuning solutions for the cars, nothing compared to what was available for American and Japanese cars. I dreamt, what if it was as easy to tune a '90 Coupe Quattro, as it was a Mustang 5.0? That's what's driven my passion and 034 Motorsport to tune these cars."
The 034 Motorsport crew looks to make some waves in the USCC, and knows it's in the deep end with the big sharks. But Shadzi is pleased with his entry. "The 'challenge' in Ultimate Street Car Challenge is definitely engineering the car with no compromise. When you take a car and transplant a motor with three times the power, it's easy to start cutting corners and making sacrifices for the power. Keeping all factory features functional and building a real world street car is a big challenge, one that we really strove to accomplish." Let the games begin.
...
>>next page