GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: Audi S1 quattro revealed

One of the most famous names in motorsport history is making a comeback to road cars, but don’t expect a fire-breathing, steam-hissing, bewinged whistling monster of a 1980s rally car.

Instead, Audi is about to put the S1 moniker on its smallest car, making a hot hatch out of what has, up to now, been a slow seller.

If it is the last of the full-line Audi models to get an S model, it’s because the A1 baby Audi has needed a lot of work to get there.

Built on the Polo’s architecture, the transformation from A1 to S1 has demanded a new 2.0-litre engine, new rear suspension, new all-wheel drive system, new steering and bags of go-faster styling tweaks.

Sharing the development budgets with its twin, the Volkswagen Polo R, the S1 will be sold in three- and five-door variants and will officially debut at the Geneva motor show next month.

The S1 quattro and S1 Sportback quattro will score a 170kW version of the VW family’s EA888 2.0-litre twin-scroll turbo-petrol four-cylinder engine, which is mounted across the front axle and fitted with both direct and indirect fuel-injection as well as variable valve timing.

The motor also pumps out 370Nm of torque, which will haul the lighter three-door version (said to weigh less than 1100kg) to 100km/h in just 5.8 seconds. The five-door Sportback is only a tenth of a second slower and both cars share the same limited 250km/h top speed.

Fitted exclusively with a six-speed manual transmission, it will not be hugely economical, with efficiency figures of 7.0L/100km and 162g/km of CO2 emissions.

Audi has fiddled with a faster A1 before. The A1 clubsport quattro appeared at the Worthesee festival in 2011 with the RS 3’s five-cylinder powertrain and it actually built 333 of the very expensive A1 quattro in 2012, complete with 188kW of power, but the S1 is a full-line production model.

This time, though, it has had to throw away the rear suspension system and plug in a new four-link independent unit designed to be more accurate, to cope with more drive from the Haldex V all-wheel drive unit and to deliver better compliance as well.

Audi will also fit the S1 with variable-rate dynamic dampers as an option and it promises it will be sporty and firm. It also has had modifications to the electro-mechanical power steering to make it turn in faster and give better sporting responses.

The multi-plate, electronically controlled AWD unit sits on the rear axle and distributes drive to the rear-end as it’s required, and has what Audi calls an electronic locking function.

It rides on 215/40 R17 tyres (or optional 225/35 R18 units for those strong of spine) and it should stop harder thanks to a larger brake master-cylinder and a larger, 310mm front disc set.

Yet to be confirmed for Australia, the S1 will be on sale in Germany from the second quarter of the year, priced at €29,950 ($A45,600) for the S1 and €30,800 ($A46,900) for the S1 Sportback, though trick bits like the MMI Plus navigation system and Bose surround sound will cost extra.