Destination UK for Limited Edition Audi A1 Quattro

It’s a market that is often an early beacon for automobiles headed for Indian shores, but then there are always those radical and ‘some of a kind’ automobiles that come along every now and then, which are just fun reading about and saying, “Ahhh!! that would make for a scintillating drive anywhere.”

Well, that’s sort of what Audi had in mind when putting together a turbocharged and directly injected 2.0-litre, four-cylinder version of its newest subcompact hatchback for the world, the A1. The Limited Edition UK version Audi has confirmed houses a specially tuned engine dishing out a (gulp!) 256PS of power at 6,000rpm and a punchy 350Nm of torque between 2,500 and 4,500 rpm.

It’s quite evident that this is by no means your run-of-the-mill 3-door hatch with mediocre appreciation in performance and power. And to stamp that thought in stone or deep freeze it, whichever way you would like to think of it, Audi has made no qualms about announcing just 19 iterations of this super subcompact.

What really sets the A1 Quattro apart is its specially beefed up TFSI powerplant, for which more than 600 components were reworked or replaced by the tech gurus at Audi’s A1 production facility at Brussels. The definitive touch reflects mightily on the drift box, shooting the A1 Quattro to 100km/h from standstill in a scant 5.7 seconds. Mated to a quick-shifting six-speed manual transmission, the electronically controlled multi-plate clutch on the A1 Quattro is mounted on the rear axle of the vehicle to achieve optimum weight distribution.

A top speed of 244km/h is amusingly at par with most performance proud muscle cars from the West. But despite all of its barbaric power a 14kmpl character trait makes this more than a mere rubber smoking long term proposition, especially for the 19 owners, who will be fortunate enough to actually command the reins on this little four-wheel drive German torpedo. If you’ve already concluded that such power enhancing fitments for such a compact design leaves little room for in-car engagement paraphernalia, you should give up the habit of drawing conclusions entirely. 

With multi-adjustable Silk Nappa leather-upholstered S sport seats, hard-disk-based MMI navigation, a 465-watt 14-speaker BOSE sound system and a Mobile Phone Preparation High system enabling Bluetooth- equipped online car phone to connect to the Internet, the A1 Quatrro is packed to the hilt.

Priced at £41,020 (32,17,224 INR) OTR just 19 UK-bound, left-hand-drive examples officially become available in early March. Frankly, we would be mighty pleased even if the stock 1.2L TFSI paid us a little visit.