1989 Audi 90 Quattro IMSA GTO, archival, limited-edition, signed & numbered, fine-art print

The Print

This archival, limited-edition, fine-art pigment print depicts the 1989 Audi 90 Quattro IMSA GTO, the all-wheel-drive wonder car that was Audi’s first-ever entry in GTO class of the North American IMSA racing series. 

This piece is available in three sizes:

• A 70-inch x 39.4-inch print (including a 2-inch, unprinted border) limited to an edition of 7.

All pieces are:

• hand-signed and numbered

• printed at one of the world’s best printers, using ultra-high-quality pigments

• printed on 100% cotton, 310 gsm, matte-finish, archival, fine-art paper

The original drawing was created, by-hand (using a stylus and graphics tablet), in Adobe Illustrator, on a vintage Macintosh computer, by the artist Nik Schulz.

Each piece ships unframed with a document packet including a certificate of authenticity and handling instructions.

The Audi 90 Quattro IMSA GTO

The 1989 Audi 90 Quattro IMSA GTO appeared on American and Canadian race tracks on the heels of the successful 1988 Audi 200 Quattro Trans-Am car, the company’s first dedicated road racing car in decades. The 200 Quattro was so successful, in fact, that despite the SCCA changing the rules throughout the season to try to reign it in, the car handily won the 1988 manufacturer’s championship. The SCCA responded by outlawing all-wheel-drive and foreign-made engines. 

Audi, however, had set its sights on a bigger prize, the GTO class of the IMSA GT Championship, the top tier competition for production-based cars in the United States. The IMSA rules were more relaxed than those of the SCCA. Whereas the 200 Quattro had to be based on a production car, the IMSA car had to retain only the roof and the wheelbase of the Audi 90 that it was based on. 

To make the most out of the latitude the IMSA rule book granted, Audi spec’d the 90 Quattro IMSA GTO as a tube-frame race car, purpose-built from the ground up. At its heart, pulsed the 20-valve, five-cylinder, 2.2-liter, turbocharged R5 engine originally developed for Audi’s Group-B rally program. Despite its relatively small displacement, it was capable of a massive 720 hp and shot flames from a straight-pipe exhaust routed, unsubtly, through what would have been the road car’s front passenger door. That was quite a lot of power for a 1206 kg (2659 lbs.) car—300 kg (661 lbs.) of which was rule-mandated ballast—but it easily transferred that power to the track via its Quattro all-wheel-drive system and its extraordinary, 17"-wide tires. 

The car proved to be a formidable competitor and dominated many of the races it was entered in. It could do things its 2-wheel-drive challengers just couldn’t do, in terms of traction, late breaking, tire preservation, and wet-weather handling. In the wet the Audi’s superior grip offered the team’s drivers the luxury of passing cars on the outside of the corners. But missing the first two races in the season due to overruns in the engine development schedule, and DNFs in the season’s crucial last race, due to the use of untested engine parts, ultimately cost Audi the championship. 

One could argue, however, that Audi achieved its public relations objective. American racing fans got to see Audi Quattros trouncing rivals in the country’s most competitive sports car racing series, and began to see the marque as a high-end, performance-oriented brand. And the Audi 90 Quattro IMSA GTO, the flame-throwing, wide-bodied, double-winged monster that delivered this achievement, went on to become one of the most beloved cars in motorsports history.