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An Audi Most Krauty Audi's turbo Quattro coupe made the idea of an all-wheel-drive car seem less stupid • By Michael Lamm

The Classics You Wa

f you happen to find an original Audi Quattro coupe parked somewhere, pull out your checkbook and buy the damned thing, because you're about to get yourself a true, race-bred winner—a still-modern car with a place in

automotive history few can touch. The "Ur Quattro," German for "Original Quattro," is

still hugely populär and in demand overseas. Yet on this side of the muddy pond, you'll find just a handful of these 4x4s left, partly because Audi brought only about 662 of them into the U.S. and stopped importing them after 1985.

Audi's full-time all-wheel-drive (AWD) System changed everyone's thinking about handling limits. It

made the original Quattro one of the most stähle, safest road cars ever conceived. In setting the engineering Standard for AWD passenger vehicles, Audi convinced the world that AWD was the way to go, not only in racing but also in the rain, on ice, and through snow.

And what happened to Audi, thanks to the Quattro, was simply this: The Company survived. Thirty-odd years ago, Audi had yet to grab its share of "German precision"glory. Back then, Audi built ratbag cars that feil apart and couldn't pull the hat off a hobo.

The man in Charge at Audi, Ferdinand Piech, knew something had to be done quickly to make his Company competitive with the other German automakers. So Piech decided to go rallying on the highest possible level.

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The Audi Sport Quattro In 1983, after winning the WRC Drivers Championship but losing the Manufacturers trophy to Lancia, Audi decided to add a new and different rally car for the 1984 season: the Audi Sport Quattro. The idea was to homologate the Sport Quattro in the FIA's Group B, the most powerful and fastest rallying category.

Audi's Chief Performance engineer, Fritz Indra, began planning the Sport Quattro by chopping 12.6 inches out of the Group A Quattro coupe's wheelbase. This made the Sport Quattro the same overall length as a Honda CRX. Weight dropped to 2200 pounds, thanks partly to the shorter wheelbase but also to body panels made from fiberglass and Kevlar.

The engine was based on Audi's production 2>liter inline five, but it was now topped off with twin cams and four valves per cylinder. The KKK K27 turbocharger took on a bigger intercooler and, in some instances, had a system that forced compressed air into the exhaust manifold during deceleration to keep turbo revs up. The compressed air caused horrendous popping and banging, which spectators loved.

Michele Mouton used this System at Pikes Peak in 1985. Where other cars would normally lose 50 percent of their horsepower due to thinning air between the 9402-foot start and the Peak's 14,110-foot finish, Mouton's engine lost only six percent. She won the event, breaking the previous record by 13 seconds.

To homologate the Sport Quattro under FIA rules, Audi had to build 200 copies. For street use, the Sport Quattro engine developed 306 hp at 6700 rpm, but could make 400-500 hp for racing. Zero to 60 was reputed to take 4.8 seconds. Top speed was around 155 mph.

The AWD system's 50/50 torque split plus the Short wheelbase and outrageous power made the Sport Quattro a handful on any course. The Sport Quattro had its peak season in 1985 but was outclassed after that by the fire-breathing Peugeot (yes, Peugeot) 205 T16.

In Europe, rallying was (and still is) as populär as soccer, bad haircuts, and lice. Winning a rally brings prestige, notoriety, and, ultimately, sales. Piech's plan

was simple: Go rallying, win, and establish Audi's fame and fortune.

Piech was a grandson of Ferdinand Porsche. His uncle, Ferry Porsche, had run Porsche from the Company's humblest beginnings, and Piech joined Uncle Ferry in the family business in 1963. At Porsche, Piech worked on the 911, the 910, and the4.5-liter, 12-cylinder, Le Mans-winning 917, which ultimately captured the World Championship of Makes and the Endurance World Championship.

In the early 1970s, Porsche AG was allied with Audi, NSU, and Volkswagen. In 1972, when Ferry retired and the Porsche Company began cutting family ties, Piech moved over to Audi as manager of technical engineering. He brought with him an appreciation of racing and the skills to win. Piech initially oversaw development of the relatively boring Audi 80 and 100 passenger cars, and when those cars failed to set the market ablaze, Piech was looking around for a spark.

In 1977 Audi's chief chassis engineer, Jorg Bensinger, talked to Piech about transforming the front-wheel-drive Audi 80 coupe into a rally car. Piech liked the idea, and huddled with Audi's director of prototype development, WalterTreser, and engine engineer, Hans Nedvidek.

The epiphany came during routine cold-weather testing in Scandinavia. A Volkswagen Iltis, a Land Rover-like 4x4 developed by Audi for VW and the

German military, did duty as the 80's chase car. Even when Audi test mules got stuck in snowbanks, the Iltis made it through or pulled them out. So Piech, Treser, Bensinger, and Nedvidek looked at one another, glanced over at the VW Iltis, and said, "Why not all-wheel drive?"

Well, one reason not to take this route was because the British Jensen FF (for Ferguson Formula) coupe had offered AWD from 1966 through December 1971 and espoused the same proposition as the Quattro.The Jensen FF sold poorly, and production ended after FF number 387. So as self-evident as a road-going AWD passenger car seems today, it was an iffy idea in the 1970s, particularly with long gas lines and anti-performance sentiments everywhere.

And yet all-wheel drive did seem like the only way to put Audi in the winner's circle.Thus, in 1977, Dr. Piech and his colleagues decided to take a gamble and base an AWD race car on the lowly Audi 80 coupe. The rally racer would, however, borrow the turbocharged five-cylinder engine and 5-speed manual transmission from the still-under-development Audi 200 series, along with the 200's Suspension and brakes.The manual transfer case came from the VW Iltis, and the powered rear

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Quattro Chronolo 3/3/1980 Quattro bows at Geneva auto show. Euro-spec 2.1-liter engine develops 200 hp, 210 Ib-ftoftorque. 11/1980 Quattros become available at European dealerships. 3/1981 Mechanical differential controls changed to pneumatic. Late 1981 Quattro bows in U.S., but with only 135 hp. Power goes to 160 in mid 1982, still below Europe's 200 hp. 10/1982 Quad headlamps changed to dual Cibies.

Late 1983 Audi introduces short-wheelbase, Sport Quattro race car. 12/1983 Digital instruments, ABS added. 3/1984 Body lowered 20 mm, rear Suspension altered. 9/1984 Minor facelift includes new grille, bumpers, inferior. 12/1984 Audi stops importing Quattro into the U.S. 9/1987 Torsen center diff fitted, allows automatic torque splits ranging from 25/75 to 75/25.

Engine displacement goes to 22 liters. Turbo now watercooled. Brakes revised, and decklid now fiberglass instead of steel. 10/1989 20-valve head from Sport Quattro gives 220 hp, 228 Ib-ft of torgue. Suspension members changed from steel to aluminum. Rear brakes enlarged. Rebodied S2 Coupe Quattro bows but European enthusiasts force Audi to keep building Ur Quattro. Earty 1991 Production of Ur Quattro ends.

axle was an Audi MacPherson-strut front axle turned backward, its ring gear reversed to the other side of the pinion and its steering arms fixed as track rods.

Problems showed up in January 1978 during tests in the Austrian Alps. The prototype Quattro's front and rear axles were too rigidly interconnected, and because all cars' rear wheels follow a slightly smaller arc through turns than the fronts, the AWD Audi prototype tended to scrub speed and jitter around tight corners.

The solution finally came to Franz Tengler, Audi's head of transaxle design, who devised a solid shaft within a hollow shaft that let power flow in both directions—fore and aft—and this became the key to the Quattro's viability.This System didn't need a separate transfer case. Instead, Audi put a compact center differential into the back of the 5-speed transmission, consisting of a cage with spider gears. From there, a solid shaft ran forward, and a hollow shaft off the spider cage drove a prop shaft to the rear differential.

Drivers could lock the front and rear diffs manually and separately, and the built-in center diff added only about 165 pounds to the car.Tengler's space-saving solution proved elegant, inexpensive, strong, üghtweight, and it also lowered the car's center of gravity.

But Audi still wasn't there yet. The Company had the wheels, but it didn't have suitable drivers.That changed in September 1979 when Hannu Mikkola, a world-class rallyist from Finland, arrived at Audi headquarters in Ingolstadt and test-drove the latest Quattro prototype. He was bowled over by the car's abilities and immediately

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signed with Audi, even though race-worthy cars wouldn't be ready until 1981.

Meanwhile, in early 1980, Audi entered four Quattro-ized versions of the VW Iltis in the Paris-Dakar Rally One of these military 4x4s had the turbocharged Audi five-cylinder engine, and all of them ranTengler's built-in center differential.

One of the four VW Iltises won the rally outright, and the other three came in second, fourth, and ninth.The Paris-Dakar Rally Covers the most brutal 10,000 miles on the planet, and finishing the race is a feat in itself. These Iltises showed Audi what the Quattro

powertrain could do under the most severe of racing conditions.

The production Audi Quattro had its unveiling in Switzerland on March 3,1980, at the Geneva auto show.The car generated serious heat, especially among members of the automotive

1982:285 1983:240 1984:64 1985:73 Source:Audi of America

press, who recognized immediately what Audi had in mind. In fact, it all made sense now, because Audi had been lobbying the FLA, the international race-sanctioning body, for years to allow passenger cars with full-time AWD to participate in rallies.The FIA agreed in 1979, adding that, to homologate such a car, the manufacturer had to seil at least 400 copies per model year to the general public. So Audi set up a skunkworks in Ingolstadt and put 38 of its ablest assemblers to work building Quattros.

Audi had to wait until the 1981 season before the Quattro's homologation went into effect. That January, Franz Wittmann won the Austrian Rally in the Quattro's first sanctioned event, and after that, Audi was unstoppable, bringing Piech the glory he sought for the brand. The Quattro easily dominated international rallying through 1984, winning the World Rally Manufacturers Trophy for 1982 and 1984 and the Drivers Championship in 1983 (Mikkola) and '84 (Stig Blomqvist). Michele Mouton just missed taking the Drivers Championship in 1982, turning up victorious in Portugal, Greece, and Brazil.

Audi's best year was 1984, when Walter Rohrl won the Monte Carlo Rally, Stig Blomqvist triumphed in Sweden, Greece, New Zealand, Argentina, and in the grueling Ivory Coast Rally. Mikkola, meanwhile, won again in Portugal. In all, the Audi Quattro captured more than 100 wins from 1981 through 1984.

Before long, other carmakers rushed to build similar AWD rally cars. In 1985 and '86, the mid-engined AWD Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 walked away

Pay Up, Sucka: Year Fair Good Excellent 1982-83 $3650 $6175 $9325 1984-85 $4400 $6975 $10,400 Source: Black Book CPI Value Guide (800) 554-1026

with World Rally Championship (WRC) Manufacturers and Drivers honors, and for th" rest of the 1980s the Lancia 037/Delta S4 dominated world rallying.

Audi hit a rough patch in 1986, when American media accused its cars of "unintended acceleration." Sales plummeted in this country but kept climbing overseas. Audi survived, of course, and sales of the Ur Quattro continued in Europe and England through 1991 despitethe 1989 introduction of the totally new and rebodied all-wheel-drive Coupe Quattro S2. Enthusiasts kept buying the Ur Quattro, though, claiming it had more personality than the new car.

In all, between 1980 and 1991, Audi produced a grand total of 11,452 Ur Quattros.They're so rare in the U.S. that you're not likely to find one outside of eBay or one of the fancy collector-car auctions. Beware, though: The Quattro coupe can easily be mistaken for the front-drive Audi GT coupe. But if you do find the genuine article, buy it fast—there won't be another one for a long time. mph

APPRECIATION: JEFF GLENN; MIKE VEGLJA AND KAREN CHADWICK, AUDI CLUB OFNORTH AMERICA; NICKPON; JAYLAMM; ERICJ. AND KENFLUHR; DAVE POLLARD. THE AUDI QUATTRO BOOK.

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