Audi Quattro by Graham Robson

Author:Graham Robson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Veloce Publishing Ltd
Published: 2014-11-04T05:00:00+00:00

A famous and very significant occasion – Hannu Mikkola and Arne Hertz drove IN-NE-3 as a ‘course car’ on the Algarve Rally in October 1980, and had all their stage times recorded. If they had been competing (but, being non-homologated, could not do so), they would have won the event by about thirty minutes!

As already related, the Quattro was officially launched in March 1980, went into slow (but steadily increasing) production in the autumn of 1980, and was homologated in Group 4 on 1 January 1981. At that time, Audi swore, more than 400 cars had been built, and although we know that this claim was a little optimistic, there is no question that road cars were pouring out of Ingolstadt before the first works cars were used in motorsport.

This is the detail story of their career after that.

1980

During 1980 Audi worked hard to set up a separate works competitions department to build new rally cars. As we now know, the first handful of machines were ready by the end of 1980, and by the end of the first season as an homologated machine, Audi had used thirteen different identities in World events, with others being used for practice, for testing, and being loaned out to deserving ‘friends of Audi’.

Audi wanted the world to get a taste of Quattro rally performance before the end of 1980, but had to choose an event where the lack of homologation would not debar it. In the autumn, too, because Hannu Mikkola was still heavily involved in his 1980 rallying commitments (not only was he driving works Mercedes-Benz cars in World rallies, but in Britain he was driving for David Sutton in the Eaton’s Yale Escorts) there were not too many spare weekends.

In the end, team manager Walter Treser had to be content with running an early rally development car, complete with Kleber competition tyres, as a ‘0’ course car on the Urbibel Algarve Rally in southern Portugal, which was a European Championship qualifying round. Running at the head of the field, using the gravel stages in their very best ‘virgin’ state, and treating this as a rally for him in all except legal details, Hannu, his co-driver Arne Hertz and the first works Quattro IN-NE-3, set fastest times on no fewer than 24 of the thirty special stages.

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