THE UNTOLD STORY.
THE PROJECT had no name beyond ‘Development Order 262’. Secrecy was everything. Audi’s hand-built ‘A1’ prototype, a product of Ferdinand Piëch’s Ingolstadt skunk works, was to be kept hush-hush from other Audi management – and, more importantly, Volkswagen, Audi’s dominant owner.
Only engineers Jörg Bensinger and Roland Gumpert, who sold the idea of a four-wheel drive, high-performance car to Piëch, along with ex-Mercedes racing car engineer Hans Nedvidek and project leader Walter Treser, plus a few mechanics in the experimental department, were aware of Piëch’s ambitious plan. They had to be, since they were responsible for building the car.
The grandson of VW Beetle engineer Ferdinand Porsche, Piëch, who took over Audi’s R&D in 1975, told designer Martin Smith that he wanted “Audi to become more than a small Bavarian car maker”. His improbable aspiration for Audi – then the maker of “ordinary cars liked by butchers and farmers” – was to use the new model as the first step in a 25-year effort to reel in its German prestige rivals Mercedes-Benz and the then fast-rising BMW.
To tell the Quattro story in all its complexity, it was crucial I talk to Jörg Bensinger, acclaimed as the
