Audi A4 DTM

This is the catalogue record of the Audi A4 DTM, one of 170 models Audi AG has placed in the historical record and one of more than seventeen thousand cars the MotorJury library tracks. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

The record does not fix a firm introduction year for the Audi A4 DTM, which is itself informative: cars without a clean launch date are usually prototypes, coachbuilt specials, or models whose history was written down long after the fact. The catalogue keeps them anyway, because the odd corners of the record are where the interesting machines hide.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Audi A4 DTM reads like this: the record lists its engine as gasoline engine; quoted output is 460 hp / 460 bhp; kerb weight is recorded at 1080 kg (2004) later 1070 kg (2007-2008) later 1050 kg (2005-2006, 2009-2011) including driver. Worked together, those figures give roughly 426 horsepower per tonne — the single number that says more about how a car actually moves than any of its parts alone. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.

Its place in the Audi AG story

Within Audi AG's own catalogue the Audi A4 DTM sits alongside the Audi 100 C2, the Audi 100 C3, the Audi 100 C4, the Audi 200. The record names the Abt-Audi TT-R DTM as its predecessor and the Audi A5 DTM as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Wolfgang Appel (Director, Vehicle Technology) / Ulrich Baretzky (Director, Engine Technology) / Stefan Aicher (Technical Project Leader).

On the record

The Audi A4 DTM also has a competition record: 35 recorded wins from 87 starts and 3 (2004, 2007, 2011) championships. A race history changes how a car should be valued — competition machines appreciate on provenance, not depreciation curves. For the years the United States federal record covers, EPA-rated economy comes in at 30 mpg combined, which works out near $3,050 a year in fuel at current prices.

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

Why concepts and prototypes are in the library

Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.

From catalogue to ownership

The catalogue records what the Audi A4 DTM was; the ownership database records what it is like to own. MotorJury computes a verdict for every model year the United States federal record covers — complaints, recalls, real economy — refreshed nightly, with no opinions involved. If this car reached the American market, its verdicts are in there.