RINGS OF FIRE
FEBRUARY 1982. Our sister magazine CAR featured the country’s first test of the quirky Audi Quattro GT Coupé.
The CAR writers introduced the 147kW Audi with: “The fastest of the world’s four-wheel-drives shows tremendous pace – and efficiency.” In the summary, they concluded, maybe slightly unprophetically: “Is the Quattro an indication of what tomorrow’s luxury cars will be like? There are those who argue that its power and tractive ability are trendsetters, while others see it as a novel – and interesting – experimental model which has little application on everyday motoring.”
But the legend of Quattro would not be forged on the road. Instead, it was the Quattro’s dominance in the World Rally Championship that inspired a generation of motorsport enthusiasts. In those days, it was a case of ‘win a motorsport event on a weekend, sell a car on a Monday,’ compared to today’s ‘tweet a photo with a pretty girl in a bikini and a car in a cool location, and sell a car the next day’.
The legendary Ferdinand Piëch, head of Audi’s technical development team at the time, not only introduced a four-wheel-drive system to a performance road car but also turbocharging.
The development of such systems had effectively already started in the ’70s but it was still no walk in the park, with years spent fiddling and perfecting the set-up.
As Hannu Mikkola, the Audi team’s first star driver, told about those early
