Rudolph Spyder from 1998 in the test

There are things that only a sports car can do. One like this one. Flat, light, open, with a firm chassis and direct steering. It doesn’t even need a lot of power. With the five-valve turbo engine from the first Audi A4 (B5) a Rudolph Spyder has at least 150 hp. Lothar Newels’ tends towards 200 hp thanks to tuning by Alfons Hohenester. At 810 kilograms.

Audi’s five-valve turbo four-cylinder engine is housed in a self-developed tubular space frame that is hot-dip galvanized and painted black. The Spyder is therefore not based on any series platform.

Image: Marcus Gloger / Car Whiz

Why does hardly anyone know this car? Perhaps because its inventor and builder, Ralf Rudolph (now 58), didn’t make much of a fuss about his stormy roadster. After completing his apprenticeship as an electronics technician, he began studying mechanical engineering, he explains at the photo shoot in a relaxed Eifel accent, and from 1984 onwards he produced GRP fenders for vintage cars. He also made GRP cars based on the Beetle in the look of the Karmann Ghia. He estimates that he sold 30 complete cars and around 160 kits. “At some point I got tired of the Beetle technology and the 50 hp engines. And I realized that there was no replica of the Porsche RS-60 racing car.” So he developed one: the Spyder. With a GRP body, of course.

He worked on it for a good two years, mainly on the mold construction. In 1998, the car was ready for series production. TÜV Süd prepared the model report – with test drives on the Nordschleife: “2500 kilometers under racing conditions. The inspector specified the lap times, then fluorescent paint was used to check whether there were any cracks.” During the noise test, a TÜV inspector crashed the car into the ditch, says Rudolph. “I had tears in my eyes.”

The TÜV paid, and the Spyder was launched on the market – six centimeters flatter and eight centimeters shorter than the car in our photo. “A customer came along, tall and heavy, and was sad that he didn’t fit in. So I designed the Spyder S,” with a 2.40 meter wheelbase instead of 2.32 meter, crank windows instead of Macrolon panes, and a Targa bar that can be screwed on.

More than enough: the reduced cockpit with six round instruments, a radio, done.

Image: Marcus Gloger / Car Whiz

Lucky for Lothar Newels. He is two meters tall. His head only protrudes a little over the window frame because the driver’s seat is screwed directly to the floor for him, without a console and cannot be moved. What he likes about the Spyder is that it is “a vehicle that doesn’t look bulky. It doesn’t look flashy. And it isn’t a jack of all trades with an electric top and trailer hitch.” If the Targa bar isn’t on, the top can’t be closed either.

Rudolph built 20 Spyders, then he stopped – not because of bankruptcy, which is the typical end of such sports car start-up stories, but because of the registration rules. Since the Euro 5 emissions standard, it has become more complicated to build cars that are suitable for registration. “Today, you have to take over all the control units from the donor car along with the engine, right down to the window regulators, because everything is so networked,” says Rudolph. “That has led to almost all kit car manufacturers throwing in the towel.” End of story?

Exclusive flat iron: 1.08 meters flat, the Spyder S crawls over the asphalt.

Image: Marcus Gloger / Car Whiz

Maybe not: Rudolph still has the molds to make the Spyder bodies, the welding jigs for the frames, “everything that goes with it.” If someone buys all of that from him, there could be new Spyders again. “If a start-up came along with an electric drive and needed a car, it would be interesting again.” Because: no combustion engine, no emissions standard. Five electric Spyders have already been built. But when we fold up the rear again and see the Audi four-cylinder, Ralf Rudolph smiles. “It was a great time.”