CarBrandLogos archive · Audi · 1980

AudiQuattro

All-wheel drive taken from a military runabout and aimed at world rally titles.

Photo: Calreyn88 · CC0

The story

A defining chapter in Audi history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Audi Quattro, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The idea arrived sideways. During winter testing in Finland, Audi chassis engineer Jörg Bensinger watched the Volkswagen Iltis, a slow military utility vehicle, out-drive far more powerful cars on snow, and concluded that permanent four-wheel drive belonged in a road car rather than only in agricultural machinery. Ferdinand Piëch backed the project.

2006FOS 1985Audi Quattro S1Pikes Peak · Brian Snelson from Hockley, Essex, England · CC BY 2.0

Design and engineering

The engineering problem was weight. Conventional four-wheel drive meant a heavy transfer case; Audi's solution was a hollow secondary shaft running back through the gearbox, letting drive be taken forward and rearward within one compact casing. That kept the system light enough to fit a coupé without ruining it. Ahead of the front axle sat a turbocharged 2.1-litre five-cylinder engine, an unusual configuration that gave the car its distinctive off-beat exhaust note. It was shown at Geneva in 1980.

Ashes to ashes quattro tvc · Bostonracing · CC BY-SA 3.0

1990 Audi Quattro 20V - Flickr - The Car Spy

In production

Motorsport was the point. The FIA had only recently permitted four-wheel drive in rallying, and Audi exploited the opening immediately: Michèle Mouton won at Sanremo in 1981, the first woman to win a round of the world championship, and the manufacturers' title followed in 1982 and again in 1984, with drivers' titles for Hannu Mikkola in 1983 and Stig Blomqvist in 1984. As Group B escalated, Audi cut 320 mm out of the wheelbase to make the Sport quattro, then added the enormous aerodynamic addenda of the S1. When Group B was banned, Walter Röhrl took an S1 derivative up Pikes Peak in 1987 for one last demonstration.

1990 Audi Quattro 20V - Flickr - The Car Spy · The Car Spy · CC BY 2.0

Legacy

The road car sold slowly and steadily: 11,452 over eleven years, ending in 1991 with a twenty-valve engine, by which point the Audi S2 was ready to replace it. Its real legacy is a word. Quattro stopped meaning one coupé and became the badge on the boot of half the cars Audi sells, and the reason a company that had been making unremarkable saloons in the 1970s was taken seriously by the 1990s.

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Produced

1980–1991

Units built

11,452

Engine

2.1&nbsp

Designer

Jörg Bensinger

Technical specification

The Quattro, in detail.

Production: 1980–1991; 11,452 produced
Class: Mid-size car, rally car
Body style: 2-door coupé
Layout: longitudinal front engine, all-wheel drive
Engine: 2.1 L SOHC Valve#Two-port valves; 10v Straight-five engine; I5 (turbocharger; turbo) (1980–1987) ; 2.2 L SOHC 10v I5 (turbo) (1987–1989) ; 2.2 L DOHC multi-valve#Four valves; 20v I5 (turbo) (1989–1991)
Transmission: 5-speed manual
Designer: Jörg Bensinger ; Walter Treser ; Ferdinand Piëch ; Franz Tengler (transmission) ; Martin Smith (designer); Martin Smith (exterior styling)
Assembly: Germany: Ingolstadt
Manufacturer: Audi AG