There’s always one. That one car that stands out from the others. Not because it’s necessarily better, but because it appeals to you on a certain level. Wörthersee is full of cars that make you think ‘wow’, but there was just one car in 2019 that made me stand beside it (for a considerable amount of time) until its owner reappeared. It was Turbo Elite’s Signal Green Audi RS4.

It was my third and final full day in Velden earlier this summer. I had shot a lot of overview-type content, but was still trying to find that one really special car. For two days previous, I had spent so much time driving between the usual hotspots, chasing this then unknown car, but without any luck.

Sure, I had found lots of really good cars, but I was still on the hunt for the special one.

I’m not sure why, but on this particular weekday I decided to hang out at the famous ENI and let the cars come to me. Well, I actually I do know why, I was beat from the previous two days and felt like having a lazy one. It wasn’t fate or any nonsense like that, but the moment I rounded the corner and saw the green RS4, bonnet open, in a crowd of other pretty badass cars, I knew I had it.

The next challenge was to find the owner…

Top tip: should you want someone to return to their car, just stand beside it suspiciously and make eye-contact with everyone who approaches. If this fails, then I find that just politely asking around works pretty well, too.

With contact eventually made, it turned out that my persistence was a good idea, as its owner, Klaus Peter-Krenmayr, wasn’t going to be hanging around Wörthersee much longer. As it turns out, a 1000+hp bright green RS4 and an overly enthusiastic local police force aren’t a great combination when you want to fly under the radar.

With time against us, I grabbed my (awfully abused) Volvo hire car and lead Klaus to a quiet area where I had shot a couple of years previously. I’m sure you won’t mind a similar backdrop from an old shoot, because it’s the car we should all be looking at.

Klaus’s RS4 is what I consider to be the whole package; there’s not an inch on this car which hasn’t been carefully considered or breathed upon. It’s impressive, and not bad for what Klaus describes as a car he bought as a “knee-jerk reaction” in 2018, but then Klaus does have a history of RS4s and other fast German cars.

The idea to build a Porsche Signal Green RS4 was in his mind many years ago, after his first red RS4 burned down with just 25km on the clock. But when a certain green RS4 came out of the UK in 2012, Klaus didn’t want to imitate and painted his next project RS4 Sepang Blue instead. He still owns that one, too. There was an Imola Yellow RS4 added in 2017, which he also still owns, but the Signal Green itch never went away.

So when this car came up for sale last year, Klaus decided that it was finally time for him to build the car he always wanted to build for himself.

The B5 RS4 Avant is one of those cars which has a certain status amongst car enthusiasts. They do have a reputation for being a little bit on the troublesome side, but many see this potential downside as being worth the overall experience.

As a matter of fact, B5 RS4s are currently fetching more than the newer and arguably more reliable 4.2-litre V8 B7 models on the used marketplace. There’s definitely a cult following for the bi-turbo 2.7-litre V6 RS car.

As some of you will have noticed from the above photographs, this isn’t a 2.7-litre V6 car any more.

There’s good reason for this. With two B5 RS4s already in Klaus’s possession and a business, TurboElite.com, built around fast Volkswagens and Audis, it’s always wise to continue to innovate. One of their first major projects was a 580hp VR6-powered MkIII Golf which was the first in a long line of turbocharged VR6 and R32 projects.

What you’re looking at now is a Volkswagen 3.2-litre R32 BFH engine.

The compact six-cylinder features JE forged pistons, Integrated Engineering connecting rods, a billet crankshaft brace kit, ZKT modified cylinder head, Schrick camshafts and Supertech valves. There’s a Comp Turbo CT5X attached to a custom exhaust manifold with a 4-inch system on the hot side, and a large front-mount intercooler and custom intake manifold on the cold side.

Fuelling is taken care of with six 1,700cc injectors with two Pierburg fuel pumps. Engine management is handled by TurboElite’s own ECU built specifically for the R32 engine in the B5 chassis.

The result is a peak horsepower figure of 1,000.1hp with 960Nm of torque at 2.0bar (29.4psi). That ‘.1′ gets me every time.

Klaus considers this to be a safe, capable number for this engine build, which transmits its power through a Sachs RCS200 clutch and RS4 quattro gearbox and driveline.

If the build ended there, it would be impressive but it’s really only just getting going.

Despite having bought the car in January 2018, work didn’t begin on transforming it until December that year. This gave Klaus and co. just five months to build the car ahead of Wörthersee, and it was completed just four days before leaving for the annual VW festival.

Signal Green hue aside, the exterior modifications have been kept subtle, as the B5 RS4 is plenty aggressive from factory. The roof rails, front grill and pillar trims have been covered in carbon by Hungarian outfit RS Carbon, and that’s pretty much it from an exterior cosmetic perspective.

The ride is controlled with an Air Lift Performance 3P system, with 30-way adjustable damping front and rear, dropping the body over 19×10.5-inch Rotiform wheels.

There is a Porsche theme to the car, and the GT2 front brake calipers with 365mm two-piece discs and 350mm rear Porsche setup highlight this.

This theme is best represented inside the car, with re-trimmed Porsche 991 front seats and a GT3-inspired colour-coded roll cage. It’s evident that a lot of time went into ensuring just the right amount of carbon and green accents were deployed throughout the whole interior, and the result is nothing short of stunning. Again, the carbon and re-trimming was taken care of by RS Carbon.

The steering wheel isn’t actually covered in carbon fibre, but is a proper carbon wheel.

Being an Avant model, there was plenty of room in the rear for a tidy air install while still leaving enough space to haul stuff around.

Twin Viair compressors feed two carbon-covered air tanks, with air distributed to each corner of the car by a digitally remote-controlled Air Lift Performance 3H/3P manifold.

Needless to say, it’s a lot of car.

What’s maybe best about it is the balance of everything, and how no one aspect overpowers any of the others. There’s a real skill to achieving this, as it’s so easy to push one thing just a little bit too far. So often we see people obsess over one particular aspect of a build without paying enough attention to other areas, but this definitely isn’t one of those times.

It looks fast, and thankfully, it is fast too.

What’s next for Klaus and Turbo Elite? Well, there’s talk of revisiting his Sepang Blue RS4 with a new 3.0-litre V6 engine setup and venturing beyond 1,000hp…

Paddy McGrath
Instagram: pmcgphotos
Twitter: pmcgphotos
paddy@speedhunters.com

Klaus would like to than Arpi from RS Carbon, Fritz, Amel & Thomas. Follow Turbo Elite on Facebook