The autonomous Audi TTS that will try to climb Pikes Peak without a driver is packed with leading-edge tech, but Audi went old-school with livery that pays homage to its glory days in rallying.
Audi pulled the wraps off the latest iteration of the robotic car we took a ride in a few months ago, and the livery looks great. The stripes recall those of cars like the awesome Sport Quattro S1 Pikes Peak and Quattro Rallye A2, though the overall look is cleaner.
"We were very much inspired by the Pikes Peak race cars," Raul Cenan, lead designer on the project, says. "But there was very different technology used in those cars overall. So we decided to go with more modern elements that were heritage-inspired."
Audi and the guys at the Stanford University Dynamic Design Lab and Volkswagen's Electronics Research Lab in Palo Alto are constantly tweaking and tuning the 2010 TTS ahead of its ascent up Pikes Peak in September. Pikes Peak is one hell of a place to test an autonomous car -- the course is among the most harrowing in motorsports, a flat-out sprint through 156 turns on a 12.4-mile climb to the clouds.
The best drivers attack the route at speeds of up to 130 mph. Chris Gerdes, head of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford, assured us the TTS will be pushed to its limits.
“I want to go up the mountain much faster than anyone with any sense of self-preservation would go,” he told us.
For a rundown of the car's tech and video of it in action, check out our earlier post, "Audi's Robotic Car Drives Better Than You Do."
Photos: Audi. More after the jump.
The livery pays homage to Audi's best rally cars from a generation ago.
Although the car is packed with sophisticated electronics, the computing system isn't much more elaborate than a typical laptop. The rest of the car is straight from the showroom. For more on how the car works, check out our earlier post, which includes some video.
The Audi Quattro S1 Pikes Peak racer, which Walter Röhrl drove to the summit in a stunning 10:47.85 minutes in 1987.
World rally champion Hannu Mikkola driving the Audi quattro Rallye A2 Group B at Rally Akropolis in 1984.
