No diesel RS in Audi’s future

In an interview with MotorTrend, Wolfgang Hatz, head of powertrain development at Audi and Stephan Reil, quattro Gmbh’s technology development boss revealed that the S4 will be redesigned in 2010 and that there will be no RS in US line-up in 2009. And if you expected a diesel engine in the RS models you wore wrong, there will not be one.

Mr. Hatz reiterated that transmission and packaging problems ultimately killed the idea of an RS8 TDI variant, but pointed out that putting that engine in the (European) Q7 makes that a Q7 RS in everything but name. It is a quattro Gmbh product, but the company is loathe to apply the RS designation to any tall, heavy SUV.