The Group B pioneer that transformed rallying forever

There were many strong candidates for the title of greatest rally car to have been built during Autosport's 70-year history. Strong not only in terms of sheet metal and statistics, but also in how much they've shaped the character of the sport. In the end it had to be the Audi Quattro, because without it Group B would never have been so mind-boggling, and its fundamental architecture remains at the heart of the sport. But let's not forget that otherworldly sound, those epic rallies, that incredible human drama. The period in which the Quattro reigned supreme still gives the back of your neck a little tingle.

Its story goes back to the earliest days of the European Union, when it was decided that a military equivalent to the American Jeep and Britain's Land Rover was required. French, Italian and German manufacturers were organised into tri-national teams tasked with creating the ideal vehicle. The results were uniformly calamitous and eventually the German government gave up entirely, tasking Volkswagen with the job.

In the 1950s, VW-owned DKW had built a four-wheel-drive vehicle called the Munga that was popular with rural outdoorsmen. The design was dusted off, modernised and called the Volkswagen Iltis. An ambitious young Audi transmission expert named Roland Gumpert was seconded to this project, and he discovered that the boxy machine's cornering speed could put regular cars to shame. He asked his boss, Jorg Bensinger, to take a look.

Bensinger had written academic studies on all-wheel drive as a means to reduce tyre wear, but here was proof that it also offered genuine hands-on excitement. So it was that Bensinger approached his boss Ferdinand Piech, grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, with the idea of fitting this system to an Audi road car. Piech (below, right) had been the bright star of Porsche in the 1960s, taking over the motorsport programme from his uncle Ferry to produce the 906 and relentlessly building towards the mighty 917.

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Colossal sums of money were ploughed into Piech's designs, ultimately forcing the family to demand that he curb his extravagance. Piech declared himself to be a 'wild boar among pigs' and strutted out of the family firm, first developing a five-cylinder diesel engine for Mercedes and then becoming head of product development at Audi.

By the late 1970s, Piech's range of five-cylinder Audis had won global acclaim. Bensinger suggested that all-wheel drive would be an interesting next step, but Piech was dismissive. Jensen had failed commercially with its four-wheel-drive Interceptor and, while it seemed to work for Subaru in Asia, it had no place in Piech's vision for Audi. So it was that Bensinger formed a band of brothers, just a dozen engineers, who took a maroon Audi 80 off the line. In their own time and in complete secrecy they began the job of building a legend.

Their team leader was Walter Treser, a former BMW touring car driver. If any non-standard parts needed fabricating or finding without drawing attention to themselves, these were conjured up by Hans Nedvidek, who had cut his teeth under Rudolf Uhlenhaut and Alfred Neubauer in the legendary Mercedes grand prix team. Suffice to say, there was significant competition DNA in the project from day one. Furthermore, that unique motorsport mentality was often required to rapidly bypass engineering cul-de-sacs along the way.

It took barely five months to make Bensinger's vision a workable reality. Only when the car was fully operational was it rolled into the main workshop, where Piech was treated to a sitcom-worthy, 'Good lord, how did this get here?' routine by his errant engineers. Fortunately for all concerned, their irascible chief was impressed.

When the Audi Quattro was revealed to an astonished world at the 1980 Geneva Motor Show, one or two of those manufacturer delegates wondered if they might just have sprung open Pandora's Box

He agreed to endorse their handiwork, but only on the condition that they could use it to win the World Rally Championship. It was decided to base these new road and competition cars upon the forthcoming Audi Coupe, but this new confection needed its own identity. VW's marketing team wanted to call it Carat, as in the measure of gem stones and precious metals.

The engineers could only think of an eau de toilette that shared the same name, and were worried that the British might think of crunchy orange vegetables. When the VW board met to sign off on the new Audi's name, Bensinger arrived with a beautiful model bearing stylish graphics and carrying the name that they, the engineers, had given their secret creation. Carat was gone (to return as a VW), and the Quattro was born.

Meanwhile, Audi's competition team learned its craft by rallying with the front-wheel-drive Audi 80, and Gumpert led an assault on the Paris-Dakar raid with the Iltis. At that time, four-wheel drive was banned from the WRC, but in 1979 the manufacturers gathered in Paris to thrash out an agreement on FISA's liberal new rally formula for 1982: Group B.

Audi Sport sent genial salesman Jurgen Stockmar to the meeting, and he made all the right noises at all the right times. After the main business was complete, Stockmar asked if the ban on four-wheel drive might be lifted, which everyone assumed was to enable the Iltis to compete on events like the Ivory Coast and Safari rallies. The motion was carried but, when the Audi Quattro was revealed to an astonished world at the 1980 Geneva Motor Show, one or two of those manufacturer delegates wondered if they might just have sprung open Pandora's Box.

That same autumn, the Quattro debuted in rally trim, when Hannu Mikkola ran as zero car on the Algarve Rally. Although officially just a course car, they completed the 30 stages half an hour faster than the overall event winner, the Audi's warbling five-cylinder engine note like nothing heard before.

Mikkola had been picked out by the two lead men on the Quattro rally programme, Treser and Stockmar, as the most mechanically sympathetic and least sideways of the WRC frontrunners. For the second car, Audi had hoped to sign Walter Rohrl, a local boy raised a few miles from Ingolstadt, who was well on the way to winning the 1980 WRC drivers' title.

Unbeknown to Rohrl's suitors, however, another offer had been tabled by Mercedes-Benz. This was a five-year deal that would be crowned after the arrival of Group B by a mid-engined, turbocharged, four-wheel-drive supercar. Rohrl chose Mercedes, prompting a very public dressing-down from Treser in the German press. Audi did not need a troublesome driver, he insisted; it was their technology that would prevail.

Rohrl was outraged by the suggestion that he had acted improperly and swore to humiliate Audi in competition. Such an opportunity did not present itself at Mercedes, however. On the eve of the 1981 Monte Carlo Rally, Rohrl was involved in a testing crash that left members of the public injured. Mercedes abandoned its rally programme on the spot, fearful of invoking another 1955 Le Mans-style disaster. German fans called for Rohrl to reconsider joining Audi, but to no avail. By then it was announced that the second Quattro would be driven by French asphalt rally specialist Michele Mouton.

On its WRC debut in Monte Carlo, the road order saw Mikkola start behind former Monte winner Bernard Darniche in a Lancia Stratos - still a formidable combination by the standards of the day. "We did the first stage: short one, 14km, but all the way uphill," Mikkola recalls. "And I remember Darniche started in front of me, one minute in front of me, and when I had done 7km I passed him like anything!"

Both Quattros retired with mechanical problems, but in Sweden (below) Mikkola's car held together long enough for him to proudly record the first overall win on the event for a non-Swedish driver. The team lost its way when the WRC arrived in warmer climes, however. Overheating in Portugal caused the team to jury-rig a fix by removing the inner pair of headlamps to get more air into the engine bay, for which it was disqualified.

By that time Treser was also out of action. A fuel spillage ignited while he was checking the suspension on Mikkola's car. After recuperating from his burns, Treser was moved to road-car duties, and team leadership passed to marketing man Reinhard Rode, with Gumpert managing technical development. Thereafter, the Quattro took great strides and Mikkola claimed third place at home on the 1000 Lakes, albeit tempered by the death of an official who was hit by the sister car of Franz Wittmann.

Three cars were entered for Sanremo, with Mikkola and Mouton joined by Italian youngster Michele Cinotto, who was competing in the national championship in a works-built car prepared by David Sutton. Sutton had been a silent partner to the programme since 1980, allowing Mikkola to take a Sutton-built Escort to Germany to benchmark the Quattro's performance. He would remain fundamental, running teams in the British, Italian and Scandinavian championships despite beating Audi in the 1981 WRC with one of his old Escorts!

Cinotto led on the opening day of Sanremo but his rally swiftly ended against a bridge parapet. Mouton swept past and was able to stay comfortably in front, and Audi's number two found herself in the eye of a global media storm. Mikkola's win in Sweden was historic, but Mouton's propelled the word 'Quattro' into households where rallying had previously held no interest. Moreover, her readiness to answer every journalist's question, no matter how inane or overtly sexist by today's standards (or even those of the 1980s), with a dazzling smile only served to polish the glow in which Audi was bathed.

"At first it was difficult to understand the amount of traction it had out of corners" Stig Blomqvist

The 1981 season ended with an emphatic Mikkola win on the RAC Rally. Momentum was now gathering behind Audi, while the other manufacturers scrambled to change their existing designs for Group B to incorporate four-wheel drive. The fly in this ointment would be Rohrl, who returned to the sharp end in 1982 with Opel. The Ascona was traditional, reliable, rugged and nimble. An unseasonably warm and dry Monte Carlo Rally offered him an opportunity on which he pounced to beat Mikkola with unabashed relish.

Mikkola then retired from his next six starts, crashing four times and suffering mechanical problems twice. Mouton had meanwhile recovered from a heavy crash on the Monte that hospitalised her co-driver Fabrizia Pons to claim three wins in Portugal, the Acropolis and Brazil. Rohrl led the title race through his consistency but, with only their seven best scores counting, Mouton could still beat him to the title... provided, that was, Audi rallied to her aid in the final third of the year.

It did not. Her team chose to focus on the manufacturers' title and spread its bets across Mouton, Mikkola and the blazing speed of Stig Blomqvist, whose domination of Scandinavian rallying in the Quattro was matched by his staggering superiority on selected WRC events.

"At first it was difficult to understand the amount of traction it had out of corners," recalls the Swede. "Some people complained about understeer, but I had come from front-wheel-drive cars and it was the same problem there. When you have that traction in that car it is so nice... you feel everything is easy."

Blomqvist had won the Swedish Rally and would return to the WRC to take second place behind Mikkola in Finland (under team orders) before dominating in Sanremo. This was enough to secure the manufacturers' crown and confirm Blomqvist's WRC future, but rendered no support to Mouton's dream of the drivers' title. Rohrl was left to claim his second crown with enormous satisfaction, demonstrating that a driver could undermine all and any technology if he so chose.

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With the job done at Opel, Rohrl then jumped ship to drive a full Group B car for Lancia in 1983. Before the new season began, Audi elected to dedicate itself to winning the drivers' title. The manufacturers' championship is important in the boardroom, but the public demands victorious heroes and Mikkola was anointed, with Mouton and Blomqvist in support.

Despite 1982 being the first year of Group B rallying, the Quattro and its immediate competitors all remained in Group 4 trim, with only Lancia bringing out its composite-bodied, supercharged 037; notionally based upon the Montecarlo coupe. In contrast, Audi's first attempt at a Group B car was called the A1, featuring a wider body courtesy of flared Kevlar panels and an uprated 2144cc engine boasting 360bhp.

This car was an interim solution before the definitive Group B Quattro, the A2, appeared on the Tour of Corsica with its engine reduced in capacity but larger of turbo, dropping out of the 'over-three-litre' class to earn a reduction in minimum weight from 1100kg to 960kg. These adjustments did little to help Audi's miserable record on this event (its hairpins requiring a three-point turn from cars that lacked a handbrake). Mikkola won in Sweden, Portugal, Argentina and Finland to secure his drivers' crown, but Rohrl remained hell-bent upon denying Audi its manufacturers' title.

Lancia team boss Cesare Fiorio gleefully seized upon every liberty that had escaped the rulemakers' attention. Famously, his men dropped hundreds of tons of salt on the stages in Monte Carlo to negate Audi's advantage on snow and ice: the battle lines were drawn. Against all odds, Rohrl took a scintillating victory on the Acropolis in which his bantamweight Lancia shimmered over the rocky stages without missing a beat. He followed this upset with another win in New Zealand. The crunch came in Sanremo, where a whole fleet of Lancias pushed Audi past breaking point, and Markku Alen led Rohrl and Attilio Bettega to sweep the podium and the manufacturers' title.

The Quattro A2 continued into 1984, during which season Blomqvist was named lead driver with support coming from Mikkola and a new face in the Audi camp - that of Rohrl. Time and success had healed old wounds on both sides, while Piech had demanded that Rohrl join his team because it was 'much cheaper' than trying to beat him. For Rohrl, there was the added allure of taking on Blomqvist in Monte Carlo.

"Stig was the only one I'd never competed against in the same car," Rohrl recalls. "All the rest - Mikkola, Bjorn Waldegard, Alen, Ari Vatanen - I had been in the same car at the same time. I wanted to know, because everyone said Stig was the fastest man with four-wheel drive, the fastest on snow... I said to Audi, 'I will help you and one of your pilots to be world champion. But in Monte I want to show who is chief!'"

Blomqvist and the old guard of the Audi Sport team tried their best to put the new boy off his game. Running first on the road and lacking experience of the Quattro, Rohrl would see what tyres were being put on his team-mates' cars and take the same rubber. After he left the service area, the other drivers would then hastily have their preferred tyres fitted before driving off and beating him. Rohrl eventually got wise to this ruse and informed Gumpert that if it happened again he would stop and push his Quattro into a ravine. Thus unencumbered, he proceeded to reel Blomqvist in and led home a 1-2-3 sweep for Audi.

After Monte Carlo, Rohrl led the development of a radical new model that was Audi's answer to the oncoming storm of mid-engined Group B cars. A massive 32cm was lopped out of the wheelbase, an Audi 80 A-pillar improved visibility, and power soared past 500bhp with a 20-valve screamer designed by former Alpina genius Fritz Indra.

The quattro S1 was a monster in every sense. Crowds were delighted (nowhere more so than Finland, where it pulled wheelies on gravel), but dynamically it could never hope to match a thoroughbred like the 205

By now there were four-wheel-drive road cars across the Audi range, which all carried the nameplate 'quattro' with a lower-case 'q', and the new rally cars were no different. Sadly, the Audi Sport 'quattro' was an unruly beast and Blomqvist refused to drive it, sticking with the A2 in which he won the Swedish, Acropolis, New Zealand and Argentina rallies. With the titles sewn up, he finally agreed to drive the Sport quattro on the Ivory Coast, giving this unloved variant its only win.

By this time the writing was on the wall for Audi's dominance. Peugeot had arrived with its mid-engined, four-wheel-drive 205 Turbo 16 and, in the hands of Vatanen, it won five straight rallies from the 1000 Lakes in 1984 to Sweden in 1985.

Gumpert's answer was extreme: throwing every ounce of weight to the back of the car, fitting vast wings and squeezing in excess of 600bhp from the 20-valve engine, which now shrieked like Brunnhilde preparing to leap onto Siegfried's funeral pyre. The Audi Sport quattro S1 was a monster in every sense. Crowds were delighted (nowhere more so than Finland, where it pulled wheelies on gravel), but dynamically it could never hope to match a thoroughbred like the 205.

The endgame was played out in Sanremo, where Rohrl, at his own Wagnerian best, urged the fire-breathing S1 onward through a sea of mid-engined rivals. It was to be both his and the quattro's final WRC victory. There was an attempt to use Porsche's seamless PDK transmission, adapted from the Le Mans-winning 962C, that briefly dazzled but, by the end of 1985, Audi's core team had begun to disband.

Piech wanted to conquer America and rallying was not the means to do so. After the spectator fatalities that were suffered on Rally Portugal in 1986, Audi Sport moved on, building Trans-Am racers and conquering the Pikes Peak hillclimb. But turbocharged,
four-wheel-drive rally cars were here to stay.