- Audi apprentices built GT50 as a tribute to five-cylinder history.
- Retro concept channels IMSA and Trans-Am with wild aero styling.
- Hints at hotter RS3 variants as five-pot legacy continues on.
Audi may be deep into its electric era, but the brand’s apprentices just reminded everyone that the five-cylinder combustion party isn’t over. Meet the Audi GT50, a one-off concept celebrating 50 years of Audi’s iconic inline-five.
The GT50 is the latest in a long line of increasingly unhinged apprentice-built specials from Audi’s Neckarsulm training center. These are the same mad scientists who gave us the RS6 GTO concept (which later morphed into the production RS6 GT), an electric A2, and even a 236 hp (240 PS) NSU Prinz EV.
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Next year marks five decades of the quirky engine layout that has become Audi’s mechanical middle finger to convention. The inline-five first arrived in 1976 in the Audi 100, an oddball configuration that delivered six-cylinder smoothness with four-cylinder simplicity.
Over the next decades it earned a cult following and many trophies, powering monsters like the original Quattro road and rally cars, the 90 Quattro IMSA GTO and 200 Quattro Trans-Am.
Five-cylinder holdout
Other carmakers including BMW, Ford, Fiat, Volvo and VW tried fives over the years, but all dropped them long ago. Even at Audi it survives only in the RS3, which also serves as the GT50’s sacrificial donor, though in a surprise move Audi’s sister brand Cupra recently stuffed the five into its Formentor crossover, and VW is rumored to be slotting one into the Golf R soon.
Audi/Stimme
From that humble RS3, the apprentices created something that looks like it escaped a time portal from the paddock at Road America circa 1989.
The GT50 swaps curves for blocky, three-box aggression, mixes in aero-driven surfaces, and then turns slaps on a set of massive turbofan wheels that look ready to suck small dogs off the sidewalk. It even gets an old-school grille that nods to the IMSA and Trans-Am legends whose DNA is splashed across every panel.
Five cylinders, almost 400 hp
Under the hood? The 394 hp 2.5-liter turbo five from the RS3 remains untouched because the engine itself is the tribute and the GT50 is more about heritage than horsepower. But Audi fans know the engine is capable of cranking out almost 100 hp (101 PS) more with the most basic of tuning mods.
The bigger picture is interesting, and hopefully could involved finding a few more horses. Audi is widely expected to launch an even more unhinged RS3 special soon, potentially topping the AMG A45 for the hot-hatch horsepower crown.
The GT50, which was revealed in an instgram post by German news website Stimme, feels like the warm-up act, a loud, nostalgic reminder that there’s still life in the old five-pot yet.