New cars are good; new cars are great. New cars are nice, straight, tight and shiny, and they exude a smell, a wonderfully refreshing, heady, nigh intoxicating odor that plays on the enthusiast's senses like no other...that new car smell. You know what I'm talking about. Yes, a new car-regardless of make or model, really-is one of my very favorite things. And without a doubt, some of the nicest new cars we've seen today have come from Audi. From matchless paint finishes to elegant, ergonomic leather-and-brushed-aluminum interiors, Audi has helped set a standard for value and quality in the new car market.
Still, there is something to be said for the older Audis, the coupes and sedans that pulled the floundering company up by its boot straps after the "unintended acceleration" debacle of the early '80s. One example of such a car is the pictured 1990 20V Coupe Quattro, owned by professional snowboarder Ali Goulet and tweaked by 2 Bennett Audimotive (2B) in Davis, Calif.
2 Bennett offers performance tuning in every area, from suspension to brakes to engine modifications, for a wide slice of Audi vehicles. Older cars are 2B's specialty, though, as this Coupe will illustrate. It showcases the full spectrum of the company's performance upgrades for this chassis.
During its production run, Audi pushed the 20V Coupe Quattro as a "luxury sports coupe." As far as actual mechanical performance, Audi's press kit lauded the Coupe as achieving "a higher level of overall performance than [was] normally associated with luxury cars" at the time. It was powered by a 2.3-liter five-cylinder engine, with a cast alloy head endowed with four valves per cylinder for the oddball "20-valve" designation. In 1990 this plant was the most powerful naturally aspirated engine yet offered by Audi in the U.S. market, producing 164 bhp at 6000 rpm and peak torque of 157 lb-ft at 4500 rpm, 89 percent of which (138 lb-ft) became available at just 3300 rpm.
Despite its merits, the naturally aspirated 7A powerplant was not part of 2Bennett's plan for wringing ultimate performance from Goulet's Coupe. 2B turned instead to another five-cylinder engine, the 3B (not to be confused with 2B), which incorporated a turbo-driven, intercooled forced-induction system to produce 217 peak bhp and a strong, extraordinarily flat torque curve, with a peak of 228 lb-ft beginning at just 1950 rpm! The 3B was released in the United States for one year only as the heart of the final incarnation of Audi's ultimate five-cylinder performance sedan, the 1991 model year 200 Quattro, precursor to today's S4.
Though on paper the 3B appears technically very similar to the 7A engine found in the Coupe Quattro, it was engineered and built to perform under high boost conditions, with a stout bottom end incorporating high-stress pistons, rods and bearings. For this reason, it was the easy choice when it came to building a suitable powerplant to motivate the Coupe.
Of course, many factory components were swapped in favor of high-flow, high-performance hardware taken from 2 Bennett's catalog of goods. A 2B aluminum four-row radiator provides augmented cooling capabilities for the mill, and a new 2B baffled oil pan was installed to guard against oil starvation during hard cornering. Some components, such as the intake, intercooler and exhaust manifold, were taken from Audi's RS2, the Euro-spec, 315-bhp stud Avant that some have described as "a five-door Porsche"; it is, incidentally, also powered by a version of the 20V motor, making fitment issues a non-factor.
The factory-issue 3B turbocharger was replaced with a high-flow KKK hybrid unit, similar to the turbo used on Audi Trans Am race cars in the 1980s. The turbo mounts to the RS2 exhaust manifold, where hot gases drive the turbine wheel and then get expelled through a 2B Quick-Rev downpipe and 3-in. secondary exhaust, all constructed from 304 stainless. Like the RS2 manifold, the downpipe features a high-velocity internal ceramic coating. All 2B exhaust components are mandrel-bent for uniform diameter and unimpeded flow.