By Daryl Lee in Ingolstadt, Germany

Basic word association: mention German cars and what pops to mind is ‘built like Panzers’. In Audi’s case you can append the metaphor of a velvet glove over an iron fist, in relation to the way its modern road cars are built, inside and out.

But just how much thought and effort goes into it?

We were invited deep into the heart of the German luxury carmaker’s operations to take a peek at what happens behind these normally closed and secretive doors.

For a petrol head, that’s the equivalent of winning a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. What we saw might not have been edible, but it was no less fascinating.

Audi’s commitment to quality is a process that extends from before mass production to during and after too, according to Audi’s head of quality assurance Werner Zimmermann: “Quality doesn’t just happen by itself; it has to be worked for day after day.”

Need an example? Audi’s engineers put an incredible amount of emphasis on detail and are constantly working to reduce gaps between body panels. They sometimes work within tolerances of tenths of a millimetre. It doesn’t sound like much but that’s enough to make for a single unsightly gap – enough to ruin a customer’s perception.

But the naked eye sometimes just isn’t enough to make a proper quality assessment, which is why Audi tends to look far more closely - even if it has to spend millions to do so. Engineers showed us a state-of-the-art scanning electron microscope, capable of magnifications up to 500,000 times which they use to inspect the tiniest imperfections.

The device is most useful when component fails during testing - then it’s literally put under the microscope to determine the cause of failure, in some cases from fractures due to stress or intrusion of foreign materials. Audi can even analyse the nature of the foreign material through its mass spectrometer.

Harmony not homogeneity is a point stressed very often at Audi, and sometimes uniformity of construction isn’t desirable in itself. For instance, the gaps between the fuel filler cap and the rest of the body vary at differing points so that, when seen at eye level, the illusion of perspective allows it to be seen as uniform.

For interiors,  approved and rejected dashboard mock-ups were placed side-by-side in a light studio with lighting switchable between daylight, dusk and showroom light.

When viewed under daylight the rejected dashboard’s colour appeared uniform but quickly took on a different hue when viewed under showroom light due to metamerism, a phenomenon that causes colours to appear differently under certain lighting conditions.

Our own harmony was soon shattered when we drove an A4 station wagon at Audi’s shakedown testing grounds to let us have a taste of the punishing tests that the cars go through. Essentially, this is a series of the worst potholes known to man and a key indicator in detecting rattles and creaks.

Sure enough, we heard plenty of rattling, but Audi’s quality boffins will be happy to know they came from our own ossified matter and not from the cars themselves.

Of course, like a qualified sommelier, it’d be pointless if we didn’t get to try out a finished product after all that show and tell. So we then analysed the quality of its newest supercar, the stupendous R8 V10, with a test drive.

As we closed the door, we found ourselves wondering just how much effort had gone into the satisfyingly chunky thump that resulted. The R8 may be manna for the driver’s soul, but there are aspects to what makes Audis feel special that have nothing to do with horsepower at all.

Blasts from the past
Touring the Audi Museum

AUDI TURNS 100 this year and there’s no better place to be for fans of the brand than in its Museum Mobile in Ingolstadt, a short 45-minutes’ drive from Munich. Heaven to an automotive nerd, it’s a large glass and metal package showcasing Audi’s long and colourful history.

Featuring permanent displays of the technologically-advanced creations of founder August Horch in the early 1900s, the Silver Arrows grand prix cars of the 1930s, the legendary Rally Quattro and the all-conquering R8 Le Mans racer.

Its rotating exhibits include concepts like the Le Mans Quattro and RSQ from the movie I, Robot with visual elements from both eventually crystallising in the R8 supercar.

If all that isn’t enough to entice you, here’s the best bit: admission is just four dollars.