Photo of the day: Audi's stunning supercar history

A couple of weeks ago, we brought you the first drive of the new Audi R8. The second coming of an extraordinarily good junior supercar, it has much to live up to.

But the R8 was not Audi’s first foray into fighting Ferraris. And despite its slinky sideblade and an appearance in I, Robot, nor is it the most futuristic looking.

Here are two Audi supercar concepts of the early 1990s, the Quattro Spyder and the Avus. They hail from a time when the new millennium was going to herald a world comprising only monorails, hoverboards and shiny aluminium supercars.

The car on the left perhaps looks contemporary to its time. But the Avus? It would drop jaws if it landed at a motor show now, 24 years after it did just that in Tokyo. And its powertrain? A 6.0-litre W12 not unlike the one powering Bentley’s current line-up…