1989 Audi 90 IMSA GTO

October 23, 2025

Take One Turbo Five, Divide By Four AWD Quattro, Get Domination.

When Audi pointed its all-wheel-drive guns at IMSA’s GTO class for 1989, it built a silhouette monster that felt like Group B had just crashed an American GT party. The Audi 90 IMSA GTO kept the road-car outline, but underneath it was all race car—spaceframe bones, a turbo five, and the rally-proven quattro AWD putting down over 700bhp of skreiching power.

quattro & Straight-Five

Audi mounted its straight-five engine just ahead of the front axle. This was the all-alloy 2.2L DOHC inline-five fitted with a colossal KKK turbo. In IMSA trim, it produced 700bhp and about 720 Nm, driving all four wheels via the brand’s trademark quattro system.

The body was ultra-wide composite over a purpose-built chassis—very much a silhouette racer (as opposed to a modified road car) and in line with the competition.

1989

Audi skipped the Florida enduros (Daytona & Sebring) but then went on a tear on the road courses. So much dominance that, on Hans-Joachim Stuck’s Audi 90 IMSA GTO, there was a little doll in the rear window that “mooned” rivals when he passed.

Tally up the year and you’ll find seven wins from 13 races … and yet … no championship at the end of the domination, the missed enduros eventually costing Audi the titles.

Meanwhile, driving duty went to a lineup of racing legends that make the eyes tear up: Hans-Joachim Stuck and Hurley Haywood were the spearhead, with Walter Röhrl and Scott Goodyear joining for selected rounds just to add even more misery to the field.

How It Drives

In a sentence, like a rally car that learned road-course manners. Fierce when you want it, planted when you need it. The domination comes from the power: that single-turbo five with just a sweet hint of lag.

But the turbo has its foibles too: You don’t want to short-shift here because falling off boost is going to hurt—keep it spooled instead to feel the immense power out of medium/slow corners where this Audi earns its stripes.

Like many of these GTO cars, it will understeer if you charge in, though, so take a lesson from the pros: trail-brake into the apex with a touch of throttle to wake the rear.

But it’s the exit that is the Audi’s party trick and where you want to get it right. AWD lets you commit early and stand it up straight. You pay less in wheelspin than the big-cube RWD cars, so you win the drag to the next brake zone.

Getting the most from this Audi means you need to collaborate with what it wants from you: Keep the engine on the compressor by downshifting earlier than you think, and time your throttle so the turbo’s lit by the apex. (Stay off-throttle too long and you will pay with laptime.)

Loud, urgent, and a bit uncanny, this is rally DNA poured into a GT silhouette and it’s coming to Project Motor Racing.

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