HSR Type 859 is what happens when someone looks at one of rallying’s most terrifying machines and decides it wasn’t quite dangerous enough.
Homologation Specials Reimagined — HSR — just pulled the covers off a restomod of the 1984 Audi Sport Quattro, and calling it a tribute would seriously undersell what they’ve built. The Type 859 uses carbon fiber body panels, a shortened body, a stretched wheelbase, a built-from-scratch five-cylinder engine producing between 500 and 600 horsepower, and a price tag that starts at $570,822. Only 84 will ever be made. The number is deliberate — 1984 was the year Audi won the World Rally Championship with the Quattro A2, and HSR apparently felt that deserved a permanent tribute in production count form.
This is not a car for people who wanted the original Sport Quattro but slightly tidier. The HSR Type 859 is for people who thought the original was a reasonable starting point and wanted to know what came next. This is a car for people who thought the original was a reasonable starting point.
Why the Audi Sport Quattro Still Matters 40 Years Later
The original Sport Quattro had a problem that made it genuinely scary to drive at the limit. The wheelbase was short — aggressively short, shortened from the standard Quattro specifically to meet homologation rules — and at high speed that translated into handling instability that caught out even experienced rally drivers. Walter Röhrl, who was not a man who scared easily behind a wheel, described managing the car as a constant negotiation.
HSR didn’t just copy the shape and drop a modern engine in — the HSR Type 859 engineering goes considerably deeper than that. They went into the geometry. The front axle moves forward 0.4 inches from where it sat originally. The rear axle moves back by the same amount. Small numbers on paper, meaningful difference in how the car behaves when it’s being pushed — less nervous at speed, more predictable at the limit, without changing the fundamental character that made the Sport Quattro iconic in the first place. An integrated roll cage goes into the chassis structure for safety, the kind of modification that adds rigidity alongside protection.
The body gets shortened by 12.6 inches overall despite the wheelbase change, and the whole thing gets wrapped in carbon fiber panels. Weight comes out to approximately 2,645 pounds — which, given what’s living under the hood, produces a power-to-weight ratio that HSR claims beats the Ferrari SF90 Stradale.
That claim is worth examining. The SF90 makes 986 horsepower but weighs considerably more. The Type 859 at its upper output setting and its quoted weight does indeed produce a better ratio on paper. Whether that translates into a faster car on any given road depends entirely on where and how you’re driving it, but as a marketing claim it’s accurate enough that nobody’s going to successfully dispute it.
The Engine Is the Heart of the HSR Type 859
Audi’s turbocharged 2.5-litre five-cylinder has become one of the most celebrated small-displacement performance engines currently in production. The DAZA version — the engine that powered the previous-generation RS3 and the latest TT RS — makes 394 horsepower in standard form, which is already an absurd output for 2.5 litres and five cylinders.
HSR decided 394 horsepower wasn’t the brief for the Type 859.
The block gets rebuilt with forged internals. A motorsport dry-sump lubrication system goes in, which matters for high-cornering-load applications where a conventional sump would starve the engine of oil under sustained lateral g. The rebuilt unit produces a driver-selectable 500 or 600 horsepower depending on which mode the driver selects — a range that covers everything from spirited road use to whatever HSR’s customers are planning to do with this on a closed course.
The engine sits longitudinally in the bay, which is the orientation the original Sport Quattro used and which HSR has preserved despite the temptation to simply drop in a transversely-mounted unit from something more recent. The gearbox is a reinforced version of Audi’s old OB4 six-speed manual, sourced from the S4 sedan and strengthened to handle the torque the rebuilt five-cylinder produces.
Drive in the HSR Type 859 goes to all four wheels full-time through a Torsen centre differential, split 40 percent front and 60 percent rear. That rear bias gives the HSR Type 859 a character that’s measurably different from the nose-heavy feel of front-biased all-wheel-drive systems — more adjustable, more willing to rotate on corner entry when the driver asks for it, more like what serious drivers actually want from a car at this price point.
The exhaust routing is unconventional. HSR describes an active system that exits on either side of the car rather than out the rear — a configuration you’d normally associate with purpose-built race cars rather than road-registered restomods. It’s the kind of detail that separates a properly engineered project from a shop that bolted some carbon panels onto a donor car and called it a restomod.
84 Cars, an Application Process, and $570,822 to Start
HSR Type 859 production is capped at 84 examples. Getting one isn’t as simple as contacting a dealer — HSR requires potential buyers to apply, and the company decides who gets an allocation. It’s the kind of exclusivity management that ultra-low-volume specialist builders use when demand meaningfully exceeds supply, and based on the inquiry volume HSR is describing, that appears to be the situation here.
“We hold formally signed Letters of Intent and direct inbound inquiries from collectors across several countries,” HSR told Top Gear. The brand is reporting the highest demand from the United States, Germany, and Switzerland, with additional allocations being managed across other markets.
Starting price is $570,822 at current exchange rates, and that’s the floor. Customisation options, material upgrades, and individual specification choices will push final transaction prices higher for most buyers. For context, a Ferrari SF90 Stradale — the car whose power-to-weight ratio the HSR Type 859 claims to beat — starts around $520,000 before options. The Type 859 isn’t positioned against mass-market performance cars. It’s competing for the same collector budget as the most extreme offerings from Maranello and Brackley.
The number 84 is the most human detail in the whole project. HSR didn’t arrive at that figure through production capacity calculations or financial modelling — they picked it because 1984 was when Audi won the WRC title that made the Sport Quattro legendary. Every car built is a reference to that specific year, which is either a lovely piece of storytelling or an extremely expensive piece of nostalgia depending on your perspective. Probably both.
What HSR Actually Is and Why It Matters
Homologation Specials Reimagined is a relatively young company operating in a segment that’s become increasingly serious money over the past decade. The restomod market — taking historically significant vehicles and rebuilding them with modern engineering while preserving period character — has gone from a niche enthusiast pursuit to a category where established collectors spend eight figures.
The most credible operators in this space share a common approach: they don’t just make the original faster, they make it better in the ways that matter without erasing what made it worth building in the first place. Singer Vehicle Design with air-cooled Porsches. Emory Motorsports with early 356s. Eagle with the E-Type Speedster. The category has established references, and the HSR Type 859 is making a serious argument for a place in that conversation.
The Audi Sport Quattro is the right car for this treatment. It was homologation-special engineering at its most extreme — a vehicle built specifically to meet rally regulations rather than to satisfy any normal commercial logic — and the handful that were produced have become some of the most sought-after rally-era road cars in existence. An original Group B Sport Quattro in collectible condition sells for well over a million dollars when one comes to market. The Type 859 at $570,822 to start occupies an interesting price position relative to that reality.
Goodwood, Group B, and Why This Timing Makes Sense
Group B ran from 1982 to 1986 and got banned after drivers and spectators died. In those four years, manufacturers built what were effectively prototype race cars dressed up to meet a minimum road-registration requirement — the Audi Quattro, the Peugeot 205 T16, the Lancia Delta S4, the MG Metro 6R4. People who weren’t alive in 1986 watch onboard footage of these cars on mountain stages and can’t quite believe they were legal. That’s the era HSR is reaching back into.
HSR’s decision to base the Type 859 specifically on the Sport Quattro rather than the longer-wheelbase Quattro A2 that won the actual 1984 championship title is a choice that emphasises visual drama over historical precision. The Sport Quattro was the road-going homologation car — shorter, wider, more aggressive looking — and it’s the version that lives in people’s imaginations even if the A2 did most of the championship-winning work that year.
Whether the Type 859 renders currently on HSR’s website fully represent the finished car is a question worth keeping in mind — the company acknowledges the imagery is computer-generated at this stage. Production cars arriving in customers’ hands will be the real test of whether the engineering ambition described in the specification translates into something that justifies everything it costs.
For now, 84 people around the world are apparently trying to find out — and the HSR Type 859 waitlist suggests most of them are already in line.
FAQs
What is the HSR Type 859?
A restomod of the 1984 Audi Sport Quattro built by Homologation Specials Reimagined, producing between 500 and 600 horsepower with carbon fiber bodywork and a rebuilt five-cylinder engine.
How much does the HSR Type 859 cost?
It starts at $570,822 at current exchange rates. Final pricing depends on specification and customisation choices.
How many HSR Type 859 cars will be built?
84. HSR picked that number deliberately — 1984 was when Audi took the WRC title with the Quattro A2. Not a production constraint. A tribute.
What engine does the HSR Type 859 use?
Audi’s 2.5-litre turbocharged five-cylinder DAZA — the RS3 engine, essentially, rebuilt with forged internals and a dry-sump system. Driver picks 500 or 600 horsepower depending on what mood they’re in.
Can anyone buy an HSR Type 859?
No. HSR requires an application, and allocations are managed by the company. Current demand is reported to be highest from the US, Germany, and Switzerland.
How does the HSR Type 859 compare to the Ferrari SF90?
HSR says the Type 859 beats the SF90 Stradale on power-to-weight at the 600hp setting. The SF90 makes nearly 1,000 horsepower but carries a lot more mass. The maths checks out, whether you believe it matters is a separate question.
What is different about the chassis versus the original Sport Quattro?
Body shortened 12.6 inches overall. Wheelbase stretched — front axle forward 0.4 inches, rear axle back the same — to fix the instability the original was notorious for at speed. Roll cage integrated into the structure. Carbon fiber panels over all of it.
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