This month’s Featured Ride is one that is particularly special to me, as I helped build it – introducing Audi Style Racing’s 1982 Audi Coupe. This vintage Audi is raced in the 24 Hours of LeMons – a racing series that stipulates that you can’t spend more than $500 on the car. Myself and a bunch of local Audi enthusiasts found this gem on Craigslist, and transformed it into what you see above. Check out the original “before” picture of it when we first bought it:
We made a lot of changes to the car, both aesthetically and otherwise. The exterior was repainted using Rustoleum White spray paint, and then black, silver and red racing stripes were added, along with our sponsor stickers, car number and driver identification stickers. After that, we removed the headlights and had a little fun with LED lights to re-create the look found on newer Audis:
Given the $500 budget cap, not much could be done with suspension & handling, but we did our best. We cut the springs to lower it, and replaced the wheels & tires as those were excluded from the budget. As you can see, there was still a bit of body roll, but not bad for a car that is almost 30 years old on a mostly stock suspension:
Most important to the car’s track performance is the brakes – luckily for us, the brakes were excluded from the $500 budget, and our good friends over at Adam’s Rotors hooked us up with their Race Pattern rotors, which performed amazingly and allowed us to out-brake the competition all day long. We also upgraded the calipers to larger Wilwood calipers in front, and swaped out the rear drum setup for disc brakes off of a Corrado in the rear:
Last but not least is the interior – we completely stripped the interior, installed a Cobra Imola S racing seat, then had a full roll cage custom fabricated for us. We then added a Sparco steering wheel, a Speed of Sound gauge panel to keep all of our gauges & switches readily accessible & organized, and topped it off with safety essentials like a fire extinguisher & rear view mirror.
And there you have it – this month’s featured ride! If you want to follow Audi Style Racing for their next race and keep in touch with the car and how it performs, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and stop by the Audi Style Racing website from time to time!
