SUSO

The press sniggered, the public were unaware, but Audi knew they were about to make a quantum leap in both sport and business.

W / JOE JOHNSON

When an opportunist spies a potential chance, he remains a risk taker, a maverick, the world perhaps even sees a fool in waiting. But when he grabs that chance, and the result is record-smashing, era-defining innovation, that is when we see greatness.

Everything was in place, three young Audi engineers had been working on the all-wheel-drive project since 1977. Jörg Bensinger was manager of the experimental running-gear department, Walter Treser was project leader and Dr. Ferdinand Piëch the chief technical executive. Piëch had tasked himself with upgrading the position of the Audi brand in the market through the introduction of innovative technology. Shrewd, bold, competent, and with a team of dedicated specialists able to turn his visions into reality, he was aiming high.

And so it was, in 1980, when the governing body of world rally, the FISA, had a call from a German car manufacturer. Audi wanted approval to compete in rally championships. To that point, all-wheel-drive cars were prohibited, but the German company were insistent and backed it up with a strong argument. ‘A rally car must be based on an equivalent road car,’ they said, ‘and the brand new Audi all-wheel-drive vehicle is a road car.’ The FISA did their research, ticked the requisite boxes and came to a decision. Sure enough, this complex, heavy, four wheel drive car, the Audi Quattro (meaning ‘4’ in Italian) was not an off-road, purpose-built monster, it was just a car, and as such would be granted entry into the 1980 European Rally Championship.

The press and the other manufacturers sniggered at its bulk, but Audi had an inkling that they were about to usher in a revolution. They had done the testing in the wet fields outside their factory. Yes it was heavy, yes it was complex, but it also stuck to the ground like nothing else, and more importantly, it did so in the most difficult driving conditions mother nature could muster. Audi new all that, but no one else did.

The first ‘outsider’ to be invited into Audi’s little secret was the original Flying Finn, Hannu Mikkola. The rally hotshot was asked to test drive the new car in the autumn of 1979, joking with the mechanics that he was “going to test a Jeep.” But Hannu got a pleasant surprise. He immediately signed for Audi, over a year before he would even get to drive it on its rally debut.

It all stemmed from that day in 1980 when the world first experienced Quattro. Vorsprung durch Technik, indeed.

The Geneva Motor Show announced the Quattro’s arrival to the world. Here it was, this pugnacious, brutish, technically sophisticated powerhouse. Quicker from 60 to 100mph than a Porsche 911, but at the same time, slower from 20 to 60mph than a base level VW Polo. The people’s collective ears had pricked, hairs stood on end at the sight of this thing, but no one really knew about all-wheel-drive in ‘normal’ cars. The performance figures were at once exciting, baffling and frightening.

Time for Piëch to focus the minds of his punters. What better way to exhibit the new machine’s capability than in the upcoming rally season. With a great team of drivers, underdog status and a lot to prove, they headed to the Algarve for the first European rally of the year.

It would be merely an outing for the new Audi. It was a ‘course car’ in Portugal - the vehicle that runs the rally course before the race to check track conditions. But when Mikkola dropped the clutch, the ferocious growl and crackle of the big new German machine heralded more than just the unknown. It was a harbinger of upheaval and anarchy. As the crowds were milling around looking for the day’s vantage point and tucking into their sandwiches, Mikkola was powering his way round impossibly tight corners and vaulting hillocks near the start of the course.

It dawned on the spectators as they saw an unfamiliar new lump of metal prowling its way round the course at lightning speed. Rally fans tend to know their stuff, they witnessed incredible pace, but as it turned out, no one could have predicted what would happen. Mikkola’s run was timed, and at the end of the day compared to all the other cars that were actually competing. Had the Audi been entered into the competition, it would have won by a staggering 9 minutes. Mikkola could have stopped for a cup of tea and still romped home. The Quattro had arrived. A cult legend was born.

In the first half of the 1980s the Audi quattro (they replaced the capital Q with a lower case q soon after its introduction) was the yardstick by which all other rally cars were judged. Victories for Hannu Mikkola in Finland and Great Britain and for Stig Blomqvist in Sweden and Italy brought Audi the toughly contested Manufacturers’ World Rally Championship. In 1983, Hannu Mikkola won the events in Sweden, Portugal, Argentina and Finland and achieved his ambition of becoming World Rally Champion.

The dominance of the German 4x4 had other manufacturers scurrying back to their factories to try and develop all-wheel-drive machines of their own. In the meantime, they pushed for another solution. Pressure from a coalition of teams saw the FISA introduce Group B to rallying. It was probably the most insane form of sport, motor or otherwise, that existed at the time. It allowed cars to be much further removed from production models, and so spawned a generation of rallying supercars of which the most radical and impressive were the Peugeot 205 T16 and the Lancia Delta S4, (once driven round an F1 track so fast that it would have qualified 6th for the French Grand Prix of that year) with flimsy fibreglass bodies roughly the shape of the standard car tacked on to lightweight space-frame chassis and packing outputs reportedly as high as 600 bhp.

The savagery of Group B was not something that interested Audi. They had a belief that rally cars should never stray too far from their road car siblings. Perhaps a wise call, considering that the barbarous power of these rally-only cars led to a number of spectator and driver deaths. Group B was pulled in 1986 after just 4 seasons. Many expected a return to prominence for the Audi team, but they believed they had already done enough in rallying and quietly walked away in 1987. Better to burn out than fade away perhaps. They had made a quantum leap in the sport. Since the World Rally Championship victory in 1983, every single car to subsequently take the title has been all-wheel-drive. Audi had made their mark.

Piëch succeeded in his goal too. The Audi brand has gone from strength to strength. The quattro history and commitment to road cars has a legacy that lives and breathes to this day, with Audi boasting the largest range of 4x4 turbo road cars of any manufacturer. It all stemmed from that day in 1980 when the world first experienced quattro. Vorsprung durch Technik, indeed.