This 1983 Audi ur-Quattro Is Preserving Rally History In Sunny Southern California
We’ve all seen the footage. Dust swirling off of an airborne Quattro wearing the stripes of Audi Sport, suspension fully extended, flames popping out of the exhaust. This is the stuff that muddy, snowy, wet rallying dreams are made of, in all their snarling, dirt-flinging glory.
Being the first factory team to mate a turbocharged engine with a full-time all-wheel-drive system, Audi became a ascendant force in the World Rally Championship with the Quattro Coupe even before the famed Sport Quattros gave us the wildest variations. Two overall championship wins and more than twenty individual victories around the world between 1981 and 1986 made the Quattro, in any and all its variations, impossible to ignore in the history of the sport; for many younger car fans of that era, an Audi Quattro poster was essential bedroom decorating.