MATT FARAH: The last three episodes of Tuned, I have
driven the fastest car I've ever driven, the fastest car
I've ever driven, and the fastest car I've ever driven.
There's only so long you keep that up.
And last week, the Hennessy Venom GT was certainly
impressive to say the least.
Now we're going to be driving some more Hennessy cars this
season as well as some of the big East Coast tuners, like
Titan, Heffner, Rentech, and some other
really, really cool stuff.
Now today we find ourselves in Opelika, Alabama, the heart of
NASCAR country.
So you might expect big block Chevys and
crazy Fords and stuff.
But no.
Because this building looks like it
was designed in Germany.
And that's because here they do German cars.
In fact, this is the most famous tuner for the
Audi-Volkswagon brand.
So welcome to APR.
Anyone who knows Audis, knows the name APR.
And that's because they do it all, from ECU tunes to Stage 3
Turbo kits, to full-on Grand Am racers.
With this company, getting power is as simple as ordering
an appetizer from a menu.
Their facility feels as out of place as a ski resort in the
South Pacific, a clean modern Mecca of German performance in
the American Deep South.
Practically everything they sell is designed and
manufactured in-house from this building.
Audi made its name racing five-cylinder-powered cars.
And it was those cars that inspired APR's founders to
begin tuning cars.
And now eight years after the last five-cylinder S4 landed
on these shores, the five-banger returns, this time
under the hood of the TT RS And we can't wait to see what
APR has done with it.
I've never actually driven any TT RS before, so I don't
really have a good basis of comparison.
But the TT RS is a $57,000 car.
It comes with a turbo-charged, five-cylinder engine, and
all-wheel drive, of course.
It does zero to 60 in 4.1 seconds.
It has 360 horsepower.
So that's the basic car.
Now this is their development car.
So the product is not out yet.
So what we're doing is actually helping them test it,
giving them feedback, letting them know what we like about
the car, and what we don't like about the car.
They have outfitted this car with a Stage 3 Turbo upgrade.
And for that, you get, obviously, new manifolds.
You get inter-cooler stuff.
You get exhaust.
Presumably some sort of high-flow cat system.
And what that all adds up to is--
and I kid you not here--
600 horsepower.
600 out of 2 and 1/2 liters.
And that's because the turbocharger they use is at 71
millimeters.
So let's see what happens when I put my foot.
Oh, yeah, does it go.
Wow.
I'm not going to tell you how fast that was because I'd
probably go to jail.
But it's got the go juice, for sure.
STEPHEN HOOKS: The attraction honestly was the motor sports
success that Audi had in the '80s and early '90s with their
five-cylinder turbos, first with rallying and then
ultimately road racing, when they built some fire-breathing
five-cylinder monsters.
And they had all-wheel drive, which at the time was a pretty
revolutionary concept on a street car.
We have a 2 and 1/2 liter, five-cylinder turbo that
started life at about 340 horsepower.
And at this point right now, it's just about touching 600
horse with our Stage 3 application.
We do Stage 3 Turbo kits which are bolt-on kits for almost
every engine we're involved with.
This has been in development about eight months, probably
will be on the market in another four to six months, as
all production pieces start arriving and all
that kind of stuff.
But again it incorporates the stuff that APR's famous for,
which is bulletproof reliability, driveability very
similar, if not better than the OEM.
And of course, horsepower and torque that
take your breath away.
[ENGINE SHIFTING GEARS]
MATT FARAH: They measure this car at a zero to 60 run of 2.8
seconds, which is the same as a Porsche Turbo or a Bugatti
Veyron, if we're counting.
Because this car is the development car again, it does
still have a stock clutch on it.
And they do recommend that if you're going to do this power
kit, you probably want to upgrade the clutch.
So I've agreed to shift properly.
But I did say I was going to do one hard launch.
So let's do one and hope the clutch doesn't explode.
Four grand I'll dump the chrome.
Yeah, it goes.
It really goes good.
Because this is a Haldex-type system with the four-wheel
drive, transverse engine, and not a true quattro system,
like VS4 or the R8, it's front-wheel drive bias.
And it never sends any more than 50% of the power to the
rear wheels at any one time.
But under load, it will send power to the rear
wheels up to 50%.
One of the things that I really like about APR as a
company is everyone I've talked to, everyone who's used
their products, really talks about reliability, and
usability, and the fact that they're not worried to install
them on their car and ruin the car's reliability.
And with an expensive car, you really don't want that.
And so they are confident that even pushing 600 horsepower
through this relatively small engine, that's not a problem.
That you could drive this car 100,000 to 200,000 miles and
really not have any issues with it at all.
And I really like that.
STEPHEN HOOKS: We got the kit testing in South Africa.
We've got it tested in Europe and Australia and here on
importer's cars and our own R&D car.
So we're racking up the miles in different climates.
Like in South Africa, we're getting hot-weather testing
there, and we're getting high-altitude testing because
Johannesburg is well above a mile.
When we're looking at Europe, we're looking at wet and cold
weather climates, both in Scandinavia and in England.
So we're getting that.
Also we do testing on the Autobahn, and on the
Nurburgring, as well with our German importer.
Even though many times we're doubling the horsepower and
torque, we're still able to sell something, and a
customer's able to drive it and come back and say, I put
120,000 miles on this kit.
I've changed the oil.
That's really all I've done.
And that's critical.
Because if we don't do that, then that's going to come back
and bite everything we're trying to do, and ultimately
give our customers bad experiences.
And that's not what we're doing here.
MATT FARAH: Because we're talking relatively small
displacements and relying on boosts to make that
power, it is laggy.
So you don't really get a whole lot of power underneath
about 3,500 RPM.
Here's first gear.
It goes from 4,000 to 7,000 RPM so fast.
The power band is not as wide as a Porsche Turbo.
But in the upper part of the power band, above 4,000 RPM,
it's absolutely Porsche Turbo quick.
I mean it's very, very fast.
There's nothing better than driving a car that someone
thinks is a girlie car and then doing the roll on pole
with them and just destroying them.
I mean, this car will smoke my Corvette, no.
I mean, my manly, testosterone-filled, nut-sack
red Corvette will absolutely get smoked by this little gray
pill-colored Audi TT.
I think probably the coolest thing about this car is what a
sleeper it actually is, not only from a performance
standpoint but from a usability standpoint.
Just a few years ago, 600 horsepower on a street car
would be ridiculous.
It wouldn't be driveable.
It would be rough.
It would be a heavy clutch.
It would be loud.
This isn't anything like that.
It's civilized.
It's quiet.
If your foot isn't in it, it feels just like a regular car.
And then you mat it to the floor, and you've got
performance rivaling the 911 Turbo or an R8 even, for what
will probably end up being half the price.
And just 23 pounds of boost through a five-cylinder
engine, you're making 560 at the tires.
It's crazy.
And it looks completely stock.
It's brilliant.
I love it.
So thanks to APR for having me down here in Alabama and
letting me drive their car.
We have a lot more Tuned coming up this season.
We are off to Florida and after this.
I can't wait to see what we come up with next.
Oh, and if you want one of these awesome Drive t-shirts
in black, blue, or that heinous yellow color that J.F.
likes to wear, go to driveshirts.com.
Get yourself one.
Peace.
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