Audi creates incredible Quattro Experience in Canada

Audi has produced a stunning Quattro Experience in Canada featuring small-scale Scalextric-type model versions of its A4.

These aren't simple replicas, though. Audi has gone to the trouble of creating a huge 20ft x 7ft custom race track with carefully-constructed bends to race them on.

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The cars themselves, amazingly, also have a lot in common with their life-sized counterparts.

Together with Toronto-based ad agency Zulu Alpha Kilo and Slot Mods USA, Audi has incorporated 3D printing technology to build an exact replica of the car on a 1/32 scale.

That includes using industrial laser scanners to generate a digital outline and recreate the body shell with a 3D printer, before completing construction with a four-wheel-drive chassis.

Audi has even gone as far as custom tuning the models' traction magnets to transfer the A4 Quattro's handling characteristics to the slot car.

Standard slot models are usually built to come straight off the track, but the mini A4 Quattro handles the corners on the custom track as well as the real deal.

Audi hasn't stopped there. Miniature cameras have been installed inside the model (as opposed to being strapped to the top of the car) to transmit a live stream to people driving the car.

Hang on... people driving the car? The final touch to the Audi's Quattro Experience, and perhaps its most impressive feature, is that people can navigate the model across the enormous track with an iPad app.

So, instead of racing from a bird's-eye point of view (as has been tradition for close to 100 years), people will be able to experience the action from the driver's seat for the first time ever in a slot car race.

Thanks to the iPad app, racers can control the acceleration and deceleration of the model car via a digital thumb control interface.

It's a clever way to keep the A4 in people's minds, with a next-generation A4 set to appear in mid-2014.

The new Audi A4 will feature cylinder deactivation technology, e-quattro and a number of other features. It's also expected to be approximately 100kg lighter than the current-generation.

Written by John Meadowcroft.