Audi Quattro

The Audi Quattro is a front-engine, all-wheel-drive sports coupe manufactured by German carmaker Audi in Ingolstadt between 1980 and 1991.

Audi revealed the car at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1980 as the first series-production road car to combine permanent four-wheel drive with a turbocharged engine. Enthusiasts often call the original model the Ur-Quattro to tell it apart from later four-wheel-drive Audis. Designer Martin Smith shaped the two-door notchback body with boxy flared wheel arches inspired by rally cars. Audi built 11,452 examples over eleven years. In 1984, the company introduced the shortened Sport Quattro, a homologation special with a wheelbase cut by 32 cm (13 in).

On the rally stages, the Quattro showed the advantage of four-wheel drive on loose surfaces, and four-wheel drive became the standard layout for top rally cars. Audi won the World Rally Championship manufacturers' titles in 1982 and 1984, while Hannu Mikkola and Stig Blomqvist won the drivers' titles in 1983 and 1984. French driver Michèle Mouton won the 1981 Rallye Sanremo in a Quattro, becoming the first woman to win a World Rally Championship round. Factory cars took 23 world rally wins through 1985. Walter Röhrl drove a Sport Quattro S1 E2 up Pikes Peak in 1987, setting a course record of 10 minutes 47.85 seconds on the Colorado climb.

Road cars first used a 2.1-liter turbocharged five-cylinder engine producing 147 kW (197 hp), with a 0-100 km/h (62 mph) time of 7.1 seconds and a top speed of 220 km/h (137 mph). A later 20-valve 2.2-liter version produced 162 kW (217 hp). Audi finished the last production car at Ingolstadt on 17 May 1991.