Audi is planning a halo supercar above the R8 that's intended to better show off the connection between Audi's Le Mans dominance and its production cars. The new halo product will be a diesel-hybrid -- just like the Le Mans-winning R18 and its predecessors -- and will compete with hypercars like the Porsche 918 Spyder, Ferrari F70 and McLaren P1 in performance and price.

After talking with Audi's Wolfgang Dürheimer at the 2013 Detroit auto show, we learned that Audi may be looking to engineer a hypercar to sit at the top of its production-car lineup above the newly refreshed R8. The rear-drive Audi R18 Ultra race car is powered by a turbodiesel 3.7-liter V-6 with a six-speed manual transmission, while the R18 E-Tron Quattro combines that turbodiesel V-6 with a flywheel-based kinetic energy storage system for the front wheels. Technology from that all-wheel-drive hybrid race car could trickle down into a striking showroom-ready hypercar.

The car is codenamed R20, an Automobile magazine report suggests, and should have the full-length tailfin of an R18 as well as full-LED headlights and a canopy-style interior accessed through gullwing doors that should make quite an impression on the track and on the street. Possibly making its debut will be an active aerodynamics system that distributes downforce between the front and rear axles to maximize stability up to 200 mph. View renderings of what such an Audi might look like here in Automobile magazine's story.

"The victories on the world's race tracks underscore our technical expertise in a particularly authentic way - and they strengthen our position on the most important world markets," Dürheimer said in a previous release.

While it appears the hypercar market will soon be crowded, a supercar positioned above the Audi R8 with a complex diesel-hybrid powertrain would likely attract different buyers than any Lamborghini, also owned by Volkswagen. As Audi continues to build sales momentum in the U.S. -- 2012 was a record sales year -- such a hypercar could be just the thing to keep young buyers interested in the brand. Worldwide, Audi isn't the only automaker considering a diesel-hybrid hypercar: the Peugeot Onyx concept was a diesel-hybrid with a 3.7-liter turbodiesel V-8 engine. Additionally, Jaguar may have discontinued development of its green supercar, but Mercedes-Benz has a fully electric SLS AMG variant coming and BMW's i8 is on the way, as well.

Speaking of electric cars, Dürheimer acknowledged he has has driven the Tesla Model S and was impressed. "Compliments to Tesla," he said. "They have brave management to launch such a car at that price."

How do you think a diesel-hybrid Audi hypercar would perform?

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The 2014 Audi R8 V10 Plus is pictured below with Audi R18 race cars.