American Muscle from Ingolstadt? Here's how I converted the Audi 80 B4 na "B4 Challengera".
Everyone told me: "It Won't Work". Others asked: "What for?”. But when you have old German armored equipment in your garage 90., and in its heart the roar of an American V8, Your imagination starts working at full speed. I decided to check, Is it possible to squeeze the spirit of the Dodge Challenger out of the good old '80?. Effect? People at the traffic lights rub their eyes in amazement.
This is the construction story of the project, which I have tentatively named B4 Challenger.
1. Vision: Angular potential
Why Audi? 80 B4? The answer is simpler, than you think. The Challenger is a "box" - angular, raw, based on straight lines. Audi 80 the sedan version has an almost identical roof and C-pillar profile. I knew it, that if I manage to "cheat" the front and back, the rest of the figure will defend itself.
2. Operation "Eyes of the Beast": Front, who commands respect
This was the most difficult stage. Challenger is primarily these four dangerous ones, round eyes hidden deep in the darkness of the grill.
What I did? I cut out the serial ones, rectangular Audi lamps. In their place, there was a custom front belt made of thick plastic, into which I inserted four LED lenses.
Trick: The grill had to be moved back a few centimeters into the engine compartment. This created a characteristic "roof" over the lamps, which gives the car the famous one, aggressive "scowl" look.
3. Widely or not at all: Bodykit i stance
Audi 80 is too narrow, to pretend to be a muscle car. Challenger must be "fat". To achieve this, I went with style Widebody.
Instead of subtle widenings, I chose aggressive, screw-on type wheel arches bolt-on. Wide ones drove under them, 18-inch rims with low ET, which almost go beyond the outline of the car. They complemented the whole sidepipes – side exhaust pipes released under sills. Maybe I don't have it under the hood 6.2 Hemi, but they look (and they sound, thanks to the new flight) phenomenal.
4. Back, who cheats fate
If the front was a challenge, the rear was pure fun with form. Dodge's iconic light bar is something, what had to be here.
I used the stock blend from Audi (the one connecting the lamps), but I redid its interior. I used LED strips with neon light, which form one, continuous frame around the words "B4 Challenger". The whole thing was heavily darkened, so that it looks like a black panel during the day, and after dark it glowed with a red glow straight from Detroit.
5. Lacquer: Plum Crazy Purple
It couldn't be otherwise. The car was painted in the iconic color from the Dodge palette - Plum Crazy Purple, with mandatory two black stripes running along the entire length of the body. A short man landed on the trunk lid, black ducktail spoiler, which optically lengthened the rear of the Audi.
Was it worth it??
The project took me half a year and hundreds of man-hours in the garage. Is it still an Audi?? Mechanically yes. But visually it's a completely different entity. The greatest satisfaction? When you drive up to a rally and see it, as owners of new cars stand by, to take a photo of the old B4, that suddenly took on an American soul.
And you? What do you think about such a desecration of a classic?? Or maybe this is the best way to give Audi a second life 80?
