40 years of quattro
Audi is quattro and quattro is Audi. For more than 40 years, the permanent quattro all-wheel drive has been one of Audi’s key technologies. Outstanding traction, high driving safety and enormous driving dynamics characterize Audi’s permanent all-wheel drive. This makes quattro a trump card for the brand. Audi quattro is fascination, quattro is emotion. But technically speaking, not all quattros are the same. Learn more about this in our Audi TechTalk.
Full information and press material can be found here.
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40 years of quattro: the highly successful technology from AudiA technology and success story from Audi is celebrating a major birthday: The quattro drive system has turned 40 years old. Since the original quattro first made its debut in 1980, the principle of four-wheel drive has become one of the cornerstones of the brand. To date Audi has sold almost 11 million cars with quattro drive. The most recent chapter of the success story is electric: The Audi e-tron uses electric all-wheel drive, and the e-tron S models already feature its first expansion stage: electric torque vectoring, i.e. the need-based shifting of torque between the rear wheels.
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40 years, 40 figures, 40 images: fascinating facts and tales about Audi’s quattro technology
The quattro drive has been a technical core area and pillar of Audi for 40 years now. The great success story ranges from the manually lockable center differential in 1980 to the three electric motors that drive the new S models in Audi’s e-tron product line. Four rings and four driven wheels, 40 figures from 40 years – a small collection of facts that not everybody knows.
Gallery: quattro in motorsports
1978
Audi entered the world of rallying as a works team in 1978, initially running front-wheel drive cars. Barely a year had passed since the original quattro was first unveiled in Geneva than the brand began to achieve enormous success in the World Rally Championship. Hannu Mikkola from Finland won the first six special trials in the snow at the 1981 Monte Carlo Rally. He had a lead of almost six minutes when victory slipped through his fingers due to a minor accident. He recorded his first victory at the next round in Sweden.
1982–1987
The following year, the quattro dominated the championship. Audi set a new benchmark with seven victories and easily won the manufacturers’ championship. One year later, Mikkola took home the drivers’ title. The 1984 season also started off with a bang – the newly recruited two-time world champion Walter Röhrl won the Monte Carlo Rally ahead of his teammates Stig Blomqvist (Sweden) and Mikkola. At the end of the season, Audi claimed both the manufacturers’ title and the drivers’ title with Blomqvist.
When the exhilarating Group B years came to an end in 1986, Audi pulled out of the World Rally Championship – but not without one last bombshell. In July 1987, Röhrl won the Pikes Peak hill climb in Colorado, USA, driving an extensively modified Sport quattro S1 adorned with some enormous wings. Röhrl tackled the 19.99-kilometer (12.4 mi) course, very little of which was paved at the time, in a record time of 10 minutes and 47.85 seconds, hitting a top speed of 196 km/h (121.8 mph). “It was the very pinnacle of what can be done with a rally car”, he noted.
1988–1992
The brand competed in the Trans-Am series in the USA with the Audi 200 in 1988, winning the manufacturers’ and drivers’ titles at the first attempt, the latter courtesy of US driver Hurley Haywood. Haywood and Hans-Joachim Stuck scored seven wins out of 15 races in the IMSA GTO series in 1989, when the regulations were a little more relaxed. The five-cylinder turbo in their Audi 90 quattro hit top form at around 530 kW (720 PS). Audi switched to the Deutsche Tourenwagenmeisterschaft (DTM) touring car championship in 1990.
Stuck won the drivers’ title with the big and powerful V8 quattro that first year, followed by Frank Biela in 1991. By the time Audi withdrew from the series in 1992, it had won 18 out of 36 races. In 1996, the Audi A4 quattro Supertouring, with its two-liter, four-cylinder engine, entered seven national championships on three continents – and won them all. Two years later, the European rules largely banished all-wheel drive from touring car competition. The quattro’s record up to that point read as follows: four titles in the World Rally Championship, three victories at Pikes Peak, a championship win in the Trans-Am, two DTM titles, eleven national touring car championships and a World Touring Car Cup.
2012–2014
It was not until 2012 that an Audi all-wheel-drive race car – the Audi R18 e-tron quattro with a hybrid drive system – once again took to the track. A V6 TDI drove the rear wheels, while a flywheel accumulator supplied recuperated energy to two electric motors on the front axle. When the situation called for maximum traction during acceleration, the race car was capable of throwing its temporary quattro drive system into the mix for a few crucial seconds.
With three consecutive overall victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and two drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles in the World Endurance Championship (WEC), Audi provided a convincing demonstration of the potential of the concept.
