Audi’s Quattro: The technology that shaped a car company
For Audi AG, the company’s drive for premium status really began 30 years ago with the arrival of Quattro, its all-wheel-drive system, and a groundbreaking advertising campaign based on the tag line Vorsprung durch Technik – Progress through Technology.
As Stephen Bayley put it in his book Sex, Drink and Fast Cars, the Vorsprung ad campaign still in effect today was an ideal way to express the technical superiority of Audi’s cars – cars which, with the arrival of Quattro in 1980, clearly had a technological edge. As Bayley notes, technology is shorthand for “my car is better than yours,” and that was the impression Audi and its then-product development chief Ferdinand Piech – now head of the Volkswagen Group’s supervisory board – wanted to make in the marketplace.
1984 Audi Sport Quattro. Credit: Audi
In the early 1980s, Bayley writes, Audis were “bought by middle-class salesmen and small-town bank managers.” Sure, Audi 30 years ago – and today – has attracted great engineers and rational customers. But the company’s challenge three decades ago, as the early stages of its up-market strategy began to unfold, was to polish its greyness by clearly separating Audi from its German rivals.
“Porsche represented evolutionary engineering. Mercedes was quality engineering. BMW was driving engineering. BBH (Audi’s advertising agency) told Audi they had to be about innovative engineering,” writes Bayley. Audi, with Quattro as its centrepiece innovation, had to be the “modern German car.”
Thirty years on, this is the space Audi strives to own today. A well-considered and thoroughly consistent product and marketing strategy has been the foundation on which Audi has established itself – to the point where company officials brashly predict that by 2015 the company will be the No. 1 premium auto maker by sales in the world, with annual sales exceeding 1.5 million vehicles.
Quattro was not always so powerful. Its beginnings can be traced to a small Volkswagen-built military vehicle called the Iltis. But starting in the early 1980s, Quattro quickly changed rallying forever and, with it, Audi’s image. On the racetrack, Quattro has been banned in virtually every racing category as the sort of technology that provides an unfair advantage, especially when in the hands of world’s greatest drivers.
In Ingolstadt, the company town where Audi is based in Bavaria, sits one of the first Quattros, ready to be driven: the 1982 Audi Quattro Coupe (the original arrived in 1980) is parked front of Audi’s company museum, which itself stands right beside Audi’s factories and the corporate headquarters.
The car that started it: the first Audi quattro made its debut at the Genveva Motor Show in March, 1980. Credit: Audi
Modest as it looks now, this upright, squared-off coupe had a profound effect on the world. And it’s the car from which all things Quattro have come. The 1980 Audi Quattro Coupe looks a little delicate now. The spindly cabin pillars and tiny wheels date the design, but the turbocharged 2.1-litre inline-five-cylinder even now seems fairly modern – producing 197 horsepower and 210 lb-ft of torque.
That’s enough power to create 0-100 km/h acceleration of about 7.5 seconds. Not too shabby, though the old-style turbo takes far longer to spin up and create boost than the new, compact turbos in Audi’s arsenal today. Yes, there is the expected turbo lag, but once the power starts coming, it arrives in a wave.
As I roll through the nearby countryside behind the wheel of this landmark Audi, one thing remains clear: the ride may be busy and the car itself suffers from body roll in corners, but it remains possible to jump on the accelerator with impunity. Quattro, even 30-year-old Quattro, delivers total traction. No wonder the Audi Quattro Coupe easily won the rallying championship in 1983, prompting new regulations designed to undercut the Quattro’s dominance.
After that drive, the rest of the Quattro story unfolds in a visit to the Audi museum in Ingolstadt. All the big German car makers have museums and among them Audi’s is perhaps the most modest, though interesting in its own right.
Our search for the Quattro story next takes us to the 1984 Audi Sport Quattro, a short-wheelbase Audi powered by a 302-hp engine that delivered 0-100 km/h in about five seconds. This is perhaps the most glamorous, most fascinating Quattro ever produced.
The next landmark Quattro was the Audi RS2 Avant. Here, Audi began to emphasize the trend to beautiful, modern interiors that today help to separate Audi from its premium segment rivals. The RS2’s build quality proved to be a giant leap forward. In a look now familiar but novel at the time, carbon-fibre trim adorns the dash and doors, and silver instrument dials gleam in the austere dash.
The 1994 RS2 was a joint project between Quattro GmbH (Audi’s high-performance division) and Porsche. It was based on the Audi 80, with Porsche-developed engine, suspension and braking systems. Produced from March 1994, to July 1995, the RS2 became a legend because of its finely tuned turbocharged 2.2-litre, inline-five-cylinder engine: 315 hp and 302 lb-ft hooked up to an all-wheel-drive system with a Torsen centre differential and an electronic lock for the rear differential. It could do 0-100 km/h in about five seconds.
By the middle of the last decade, Audi had emerged as a serious player among premium German auto makers. The poster child for all that was, arguably, the 2006 Audi RS4 Avant, with its monstrous 4.2-litre V-8: 414 hp and a 0-100 km/h time of about five seconds. This Audi, however, was not only quick, but offered exquisitely refined driving responses.
The secret lay in the chassis. This was the first Quattro to alter the long-standing torque split in the Audi all-wheel-drive system: from 50 per cent front/50 per cent rear to 40 per cent front/60 per cent rear. The idea behind this refinement was to create the handling balance of a rear-wheel-drive car without sacrificing the advantages of Quattro all-wheel drive.
By the latter part of the last decade, Audi began to hit its Quattro stride with a range of brilliant entries, including the 2006 RS6 from Quattro GmbH (the source of all RS models). The RS6 has the 40 per cent front/60 per cent rear torque split, plus a twin-turbo 5.0-litre V-10 that makes 572 hp and was clocked doing 0-100 km/h in the 4.6-second range.
The 2009 Audi S4, meanwhile, comes next in our line of significant Quattros. A sedan with somewhat sober looks, the S4 adopted a supercharged, direct-injected 3.0-litre V-6 in place of a bigger V-8. The payoff was a lighter, more efficient and powerful car rated at 328 hp and 324 lb-ft of torque.
The torque split of 40 per cent front/60 per cent rear for the all-wheel-drive system is here, but a key innovation is the torque-vectoring differential for the rear axle. It can divert power to the outside rear wheel to reduce under-steer. The S4 offered a new level of high-performance Quattro grip.
The final piece of the Quattro puzzle to date comes in the shape of the menacing looking Audi R8 GT. This is a street-legal race car, right down to its moulded fibreglass tub seats, the four-point harnesses for driver and passenger, and the 560-horsepower, 5.2-litre V-10 just behind your ear.
Fast? Oh, yes: 0-100 km/hour in less than 3.5 seconds. The car is lighter than the modestly powerful (525-hp) R8 5.2 FSI by 100 kg, too. And it’s exclusive. Audi will build just 333 GTs, of which a couple of dozen will make their way to Canada next year. Expect to pay at least $50,000 more than the R8 V-10’s base price of $173,000.
Thirty years ago when the Vorsprung durch Technik message was being underpinned by this new Quattro drive technology, no one at Audi or elsewhere expected to see something quite like the R8 GT. It begs the question: What will Quattro mean 30 years hence? Perhaps electric motors at all four wheels, delivering precisely controlled applications of power with perfect balance? Who knows.
We know this, though. Quattro changed the face of Audi and has been hugely significant in the car business, from both a technology and marketing standpoint.
Source: Cato, Jeremy. (2010, November 2). 30 years of the ‘modern german car’ . Globe and Mail, Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/new-cars/auto-news/30-years-of-the-modern-german-car/article1775272/