Audi celebrates the five millionth Audi with a quattro drive system. The car is a white Audi A6 allroad 3.0 TDI; it rolled off the assembly line at the Neckarsulm plant.
No other premium brand in the world can claim such high sales figures for a four-wheel drive or a comparable range of models boasting more than 140 quattro variants.
Quattro technology debuted in 1980 in the legendary, original quattro car. Adding together all of the available body types, engines and drive systems amounts to more than 140 different models. Audi offers the widest range of cars by far with all-wheel drive: the Audi Q7, R8, A4 allroad, A6 allroad as well as all S and RS models are available exclusively with quattro drives; Audi offers it as an option in all other model lines.
The quattro is especially important for the Neckarsulm site, where the record-setting car rolled off of the assembly line: more than one of every two cars Audi produces there features all-wheel drive.
In 2012 more than 43 percent of Audi customers selected a quattro model – a new record. The Audi Q5 tops the list with about 205,600 units. But it’s not just SUV drivers who rely on the all-wheel drive from the carmaker with the four rings: nearly one in four customers for the other model lines selected a quattro drive in 2012.
The quattro models sell particularly well in the United States, Canada, Russia and in the markets of the Middle East. Statistics for 2012 show around 99,800 new registrations for all-wheel drive Audi models in Germany as well – considerably more than the company’s competitors.
