Read too many marque histories and you could come away with the idea that Audi’s Quattro was as significant to automotive technology as the wheel itself. It wasn’t of course, as witnessed by the fact that all-wheel drive cars remain in the minority, but it was a real game-changer back in its day. Especially of course on the rally stages which is where the car proved the worth of four-wheel drive in a performance application and took the Audi brand from a maker of rebadged Passats to a front-runner in the performance car game.
It was only the original turbocharged Quattro coupe (Ur-Quattro from the German ‘Ur’ meaning original) which received the capital Q in its name, the 4×4 option later extended across the range as a specification badged simply ‘quattro’.
By that point the Audi brand had become as synonymous with 4×4 as Subaru and so the original had done its job very well. It was replaced by the technically superior but somehow less charismatic S2 and today the Ur-Quattro is joining the ranks of the blue chip supercars at auction.
The Quattro owes a debt not to the Jensen FF as you might think, but to VW Group’s military vehicle, the Iltis. During cold-weather testing of the second-generation Audi 80 in the late ’70s, Audi development engineers noticed how the four-wheel drive Iltis was able to keep up with the more powerful front-drive Audis on icy roads and the idea of using all-wheel drive for on-road performance rather than off-road mud-plugging was born.
Championed by Audi’s legendary Ferdinand Piëch, a prototype was worked up using an Audi 80. At the time conventional four-wheel drive systems were bulky and heavy, using a separate transfer box to send power to the additional axle, often driven by chain. Only Subaru offered a neat road-biased solution with its boxer engine and front transaxle arrangement allowing drive to be taken rearward without a separate transfer box but Audi’s system was more elegant still.
