AUDI RS2

THE QUATTRO was a problem. In the early 90s, the ghost of the ur-Quattro haunted Audi. Of course, Audi wasn’t alone in experiencing this problem. The E-Type legend gives Jaguar designers sleepless nights and Pagani still can’t lay the Zonda’s ghost to rest. Build a once-in-a-generation car and the follow-up is, by definition, going to be a disappointment.

That car was the S2 coupe. Mechanically fairly similar to the final ur-Quattro 20v but saddled with 120kg of extra pork, more feminine styling, softer suspension, lame Servotronic speed-sensitive power steering, and no meaningful competition pedigree to lean on, the S2 struggled. It was a car that Ingolstadt expected to continue the lineage, but almost immediately found itself outdated, out of its depth and plumb out of goodwill.

The year after Audi’s 162kW coupe launched, BMW introduced the lighter, quicker and more rewarding E36 M3 coupe. Audi had no answer to the 213kW BMW, despite heavily revising the S2 coupe and adding a wagon variant for 1993. The five-door was particularly interesting, especially when you looked beneath