#a5

The current-generation Audi A5 is widely considered a success for the German automaker, blending a stunningly stylish body with luxury and performance.

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Audi Motorsport has revealed the designs for its eight A5 DTM race cars scheduled to compete at the Hockenheimring season opener on April 29th.

Audi has plenty to celebrate this year, having eclipsed their previous annual sales record of 101,629 (set in 2010) with a month to go in 2011. Sales through the Thanksgiving weekend stood at 102,055 vehicles, giving Audi an amazing year to go along with having record-setting months in each of the first 10 months of the year.

BMW has already made the 2012 DTM season interesting, and now Audi is joining in on the fun by releasing several renderings of its upcoming A5 DTM race car. The two-door coupe will be the successor to Audi’s highly successful A4 DTM racer and will utilize the upcoming 2012 A5 refresh as its foundation.

Audi is planning to rival the Range Rover Evoque with it’s own fastback-styled, sporty version badged as the Q4. Audi will likely launch the Q4 in 2014/2015 and will cost around £30,000 ($47,500).

Jens Eklund is hardly a stranger to building high-horsepower Audi drag cars, having campaigned a wildly popular 9-second 1,000-hp Audi S6 in the past. He decided that the S6’s styling was becoming outdated, and given just how beautiful the new A5 looks, he decided to build a whole new chassis to terrorize Sweden’s drag racing tracks with.

Volkswagen is planning a coupe and convertible variant of the traditional 4-door Passat sedan/ wagon. This coupe is slated to fit below the Audi A5, as well as the convertible version.

Senner Tuning is really making some noise among Audi fanatics, having tuned the A1 previously and now releasing an RS Body Kit for the A5/S5 Cabriolet. We’re big fans of what Senner Tuning does because they focus on subtle modifications that really refine the vehicle, giving it some polish rather than changing up the styling entirely. The result are functionally clean vehicles that anyone can relate to.

Audi has just officially released full details and plenty of photos on their new A5 Sportback model and unfortunately the German automaker has no plans to bring the surprisingly great looking model to North America.

Audi has yet to confirm if the A5 Sportback model will make it to North America, but the German automaker did bring at least one of the upcoming cars over for a photo shoot. These pictures, snapped a student at the University of California San Diego, show a completely undisguised A5 Sportback during a photo shoot on the campus. And we have to say it looks pretty good.

Audi has just announced that it will bring a Sportback version of the stunning A5 to market this year. The move by Audi comes just weeks after BMW released its 5 Series Gran Turismo.

The new model has the soul of a coupe, the comfort of a sedan and the practicality of a wagon (or Avant, as they say at Audi).

In Europe the car will initially be offered with five powertrains, including two gasoline and three diesel options. The gasoline engines are, as expected, the 2.0 TFSI engine making 211hp and 258 ft-lbs of torque and the 3.2-liter V6 with 265hp.

As for the diesels, they include the 2.0 TDI with 170 and 258 ft-lbs of torque, the 2.7 TDI with 190hp and 295 ft-lbs of torque and a 3.0-liter V6 TDI with 240hp and a massive 369 ft-lbs of torque.

As for cargo capacity, Audi says the new model has 17 cubic feet of cargo space (almost the same as the A4 Avant), and 34.6 cu.-ft. with the rear seats folded flat.

While Audi has yet to release any full photos of the car, the rear hatch section does slope off from the roof that is 1.42-inches lower than that of the A4.

Word of the new model comes from Audi in Europe, but the car will most likely make its way to North America – why else would those Europeans have listed all the stats in ft-lbs and cubic-feet, as well as Nm and liters? The only question mark is what powertrains will be offered. Diesels are unlikely and with Audi recently eliminating the 3.2 V6 from many of its vehicles, the 2.0 TFSI is the only option left.

The A5 Sportback will go on sale in Europe this September with a starting price of 36,050 Euros. If Audi does decide to bring the car to the U.S., the following Spring would be the most likely time.

Official release after the jump:

We reported earlier today that Audi has cut the 3.2-liter V6 engine from much of its lineup and now it seems the company is expanding the use of the impressive 2.0 TFSI engine.