'Epitome of fast road engineering |
Carlton Boyce
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The Daddy and reputed to have been the most powerful car in its class when the madness drew to a end.
It started as a relatively long, front heavy, 200bhp, front-engined, steel bodied, four seat hatchback and ended as a 591bhp, shortened, carbon-Kevlar, two seat supercar. The quattro dominated the 1983 and 1984 seasons and shocked the rallying world. Its influence is felt even today; four-wheel drive road cars with turbos are still seen as the epitome of fast road engineering and still much in demand by drivers and marketing departments alike. They always looked magnificent with that big bluff-fronted, flared-arch, aggressive stance and are still a huge favourite even today with prices rising slowly; buy a good one – even a standard road car – and you are unlikely to lose money. "If we had the money to buy a Gp B car this would be it." Carlton Boyce carvalulation.com |
Pure Rally Heaven |
Best moment: Hannu Mikkola and Stig Blomqvist winning consecutive Drivers’ titles behind the wheel of Quattros in 1983 and 1984
Worst moment: Audi’s decision to pull out of Group B immediately following a fatal crash at the 1986 Rally de Portugal Why it’s here: Quite simply, the Quattro is the most important rally car of all time There have been game changers in rally, but nothing on the scale of the Audi Quattro. WRC manufacturers had initially resisted adopting four-wheel-drive on their cars, thinking that the extra weight and complexity of the systems would cancel out any advantages. But when the original non-Group B Quattro debuted in 1980, it immediately showed that a well-sorted four-wheel-drive system was the business. When Audi brought out the Group B versions of the car, first the A1 and the A2 and then the radical Sport Quattro, the formula was refined; power figures were increasingly hiked to a reported 591bhp in 1986, and the blueprint of modern rally cars was set. But what really gets rally fans hot under the collar is the vision of the Quattro S1 E2’s enormous wings and the primordial timbre of the car’s five-cylinder engine howling at full chat. Pure. Rally. Heaven. Red Bull Greg Stuart on 23 November 2016 |
All the way to the track, I’d struggled to pin down the modern car that best represented what the Audi Quattro was in its day. I knew it was waiting there for me, and when I arrived I wanted to do so with a context, a reference point already fixed in my mind so that I could approach this genuine legend ready to grab hold of it and not be overawed by its status and history.
The Audi Quattro never really changed, visually, from first arrival in 1980 to end of the road in 1991. That’s not something that happens often, if ever. It won the World Rally Championship in 1983 and 1984. It spawned an entire generation of four-wheel-drive rally cars and rally-car wannabes. It won the gruelling Pikes Peak International Hill Climb with Michèle Mouton in 1985, setting a world record in the process. And it won again in 1987 with Walter Röhrl at the wheel. All the names associated with it are legends. In the hands of legendary rally car god Stig Blomqvist, winner of the 1984 WRC in one, it was entirely unbeatable. It moved things on forever when it arrived. Was it a Nissan GT-R of its day, I wondered, a giant-killer using new tech to devastating effect? Or an Audi R8 - something new and different? Only time will tell which of the modern crop measures up to its myth-building pedigree. I had no way of knowing what to compare it with. And then, when I arrived and saw it, I knew what it was and is. It’s an old prizefighter. Its ears are pulverised now and it staggers sometimes when it moves, but, my god, its gnarled old hands can still hammer the crap out of the young pups if it chooses to, and it feels every inch the battered, time-served old hero. By 1991, when the car I’m driving was built, the engine was a 2,226cc 20v DOHC making 220bhp. Top speed was 143mph. There’s none of that ‘fast for its day’ stuff going on here, or even ‘still feels fast today’. It IS fast, today or any other day. There’s really no bull with the Audi, no sense of it being designed as much for bar-room bragging rights as for genuine ability. It absolutely is what it always promised to be, nothing more and nothing less. The Martin Smith-designed wheel arches still look like they’re struggling to contain the car’s muscles beneath their taut flares, and they are. It sounds glorious too: an uncomplicated, mechanical bellow - no self-conscious audio enhancements here. This is my first proper drive in one, and it feels like I’d fall apart before the car ever would, whatever we try and get up to out on the track. It feels, in fact, like the rally car it really is. I’d love to be able to use such a device to the limit of its capabilities. The reality of it is, I’m very unlikely ever to manage that. It is, simply, better than me. Words: Richard Hammond Pics: Justin Leighton This feature first appeared in the August 2012 issue of Top Gear magazine |