One of the most significant rally cars of all time made its introduction to the world in 1980, with the unveiling of Audi’s rally contender, the Quattro. The Quattro was the first rally car to take advantage of the new rules permitting four-wheel-drive for rally competition, but there were some initial doubts about four-wheel-drive’s suitability to rallying. Some thought it would be too complex and heavy to be competitive. The critics were quickly proven wrong.

The Quattro won its first rally on its first outing, the Austrian round of the European championship in 1981: the four-wheel-drive experiment was an instant success. The Quattro went on to win a couple rounds of the world rally championship, and Audi gained additional exposure when Michèle Mouton won the 1981 San Remo rally, the first woman to win at the international level. The 1982 season looked set to be an Audi tour de force.

While the Audi was clearly the fastest and one of the most revolutionary rally cars in some time, it did have a number of shortcomings. The Quattro was rather heavy, its front-engine, monocoque chassis gave the car clumsy and unwieldy handling characteristics, and the car had problems with mechanical reliability. The car did win the 1982 championship for constructors, but Walter Röhrl took his first win of the year and the championship on the final event, the Ivory Coast rally, after Michèle Mouton’s Quattro suffered a broken transmission.

Audi Sport Quattro S1

The 1983 season was another bittersweet season for Audi; the introduction of the Lancia 037 promised fiercer competition (despite the 037 still being rear-wheel-drive), and the 037 delivered. Audi’s #1 driver, Hannu Mikkola, won the 1983 driver’s championship, but Lancia pilots Markku Alen and Walter Röhrl finished in the points frequently enough to give Lancia the constructor’s title. The 1984 season was Audi’s most successful year in rallying. Stig Blomqvist’s sideways driving style plus the introduction of the short-wheelbase, more powerful (450+ hp) and more advanced (six-speed transmission, kevlar bodywork) Sport Quattro combined to take both titles for the 1984 season.

However, the 1984 season saw a new challenger to Audi’s crown: Peugeot launched their brand new 205 T16 in Corsica for the 1984 Tour de Corse rally. The new 205 differed from the Quattro in several key respects: it was rear-engined, it had a space frame, and it was a generally smaller car with less weight. Peugeot driver Ari Vatanen nearly won the 205′s first rally, except a crash prematurely ended his rally. The Peugeot caused enough concern that the Audi team managers sent messages back to the engineers in Ingolstadt, reminding the engineers to keep up development, and not to be complacent with the current success.

The title of “king of the hill” was transferred to Peugeot at the start of the 1985 season. The Sport Quattro was simply unable to keep up; its handling and reliability was poor compared with the 205 T16. Audi never ceased development despite losing its crown, and the radical Sport Quattro S1, introduced at the 1000 Lakes rally in 1985, proved to the rally community that Audi was very serious in its attempt to regain its previous form. The S1 had more power than any other rally car in history, reaching over 600 horsepower in 1986, and it had huge wings to aid with traction on faster stages. Faced with ever-increasing competition, the S1 only managed a single victory, on the San Remo rally in 1985.

The curtain call for Audi’s Group B program came with the death of Henri Toivonen on the Tour de Corse 1986; following Toivonen’s death, Audi, along with Ford, immediately pulled the plug on its Group B rally program. The Quattro in its various iterations competed for four and a half years, winning four championships, and changing the face of rallying forever.

Pikes Peak Hill Climb

While the Quattro was attacking the world rally championship, Audi decided that it needed to increase exposure in America. Audi decided to send its American works driver John Buffum to Pikes Peak, to compete in the annual hillclimb. The Quattro’s first attempt was impressive: Buffum set a time which was only beaten by eight purpose-built hillclimb racers. The 1983 event was similar to 1982, with Buffum finishing sixth overall. In 1984 and 1985, Audi sent Michèle Mouton to America, and in 1985 she set the fastest time ever recorded on the mountain. 1986 came, and Audi hired American racing driver Bobby Unser to drive. He won. In 1987, Walter Röhrl won again for Audi, setting another overall record. The following year, Peugeot sent Ari Vatanen to America with a 405 T16, and he broke Röhrl’s record by less than a second. Vatanen’s record stood for a number of years, when it was finally broken by Rod Millen’s supermodified Celica hillclimb special. The Group B cars not only changed rallying, but they impacted hillclimb racing as well.

Perhaps the most incredible feat Audi ever achieved in rallying never made it to rally competition. After the cancellation of Group B in 1986, Audi announced they had built an engine for rallying with more than 1000 horsepower! The engine was tested in several hillclimbs, but the drivers reported that the car was completely undrivable, with an unsettling tendency to simply go straight in the corners. The Audi engineers never ceased to amaze rally observers during the Group B days, and even today, rally fans remember the Quattro with a mixture of awe and respect.

The beginning of Group B
Rally cars before the Group B era were, for the most part, rear-wheel-drive with about 250 horsepower, because any more power merely resulted in wheelspin.  Some of the more famous rally cars from this period were the Lancia Stratos, the Fiat 131 Abarth, and the Porsche 911.

In 1979, FISA (Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile, the sanctioning body for rallying) legalized all-wheel-drive for rallying. The manufacturers involved in rallying at the time considered four-wheel-drive too heavy and complex to be successful. They were all proven wrong when Audi launched its new Quattro in 1980, and announced its intention to use the 1980 and 1981 seasons as development years.

Audi quattro Group B (Photo: Audi)

Audi continued its development during the 1981 season, winning several rounds of the WRC, including the San Remo rally, which was an historic event because it was the first ever international rally won by a woman, Michèle Mouton. 1982 firmly established Audi as the team to beat. The 1983 season saw the creation of Groups A and B, and the first real Group B car arrived on the scene – the Lancia 037 Monte Carlo. Audi’s first major rival had arrived.

The evolution of Group B
The 037 was different from the Quattro in several key respects – it was supercharged instead of turbocharged, and it still had rear-wheel-drive, due to Lancia’s uncertainty about the potential of four-wheel-drive. It was, however, a Group B rally car (the Quattro was still built to the Group 4 specifications), and the new Group B class only required 200 copies of a car for homologation. The Group B rally teams could also produce “evolution” versions of their cars – and only twenty copies would be required! Group B also had minimal weight restrictions, plus the use of high-tech materials was permitted in the construction of the cars. These elements, plus manufacturers with unlimited resources, allowed Group B to evolve extremely quickly.

Lancia 037 (Photo: rallybuzz.com)

The new 037 was instantly at a disadvantage due to its lack of four-wheel-drive. Four-wheel-drive allowed Audi to run with a lot more power, due to the increased traction. However, the Quattro had a number of flaws which allowed the 037 to win the Manufacturer’s title in 1983: the Quattro was unreliable, it was clumsy and unwieldy to drive, and its front-engine, monocoque chassis was soon rendered obsolete by the mid-engine, space frame design of the Peugeot 205 T16.

Peugeot had built a strong team, with Ari Vatanen as the driver and Jean Todt running the rally program. Vatanen crashed out of the Corsican rally, but went on to give the 205 its first win at the 1000 Lakes rally in Finland later that year. By this time, Audi had introduced its Sport Quattro, while the 037 was already showing its age.

The 1985 RAC rally saw a whole pack of new challengers hungry to challenge Peugeot’s dominance. Lancia debuted its new Delta S4, which was supercharged and turbocharged, Ford unveiled the RS200, Austin-Metro launched its new Metro 6R4, Audi entered its radical S1 Quattro, and Peugeot countered the newcomers with the 205 T16 Evolution 2.

Peugeot 205 T16

The end of Group B
The inevitable finally happened: during the 1986 Port Wine rally in Portugal, a Ford RS200 left the road on a spectator stage, killing three and injuring dozens; after the crash, all the works teams withdrew from the rally. But the final blow for Group B came on May 4, 1986.

Lancia’s lead driver, Henri Toivonen, was dominating the 1986 championship and the Tour de Corse rally when his S4 left the road during a twisty tarmac stage. The car went off the edge of the road, hitting trees and rocks while sliding down a hillside. Toivonen and his navigator, Sergio Cresto, were killed.

Group B and Group S were instantly cancelled for the 1987 season; Ford and Audi withdrew from Group B immediately. The other works teams decided to see the season out.

Was it right to ban the Group B cars? Personally, I think so. If FISA had done a better job of regulating the cars, then maybe the Group B cars could have stayed. But since FISA focused the majority of their attention on F1, they didn’t realize how fast the Group B cars had become; it took an accident like Toivonen’s to get FISA’s attention. The Group B cars had reached the point where they belonged on a racetrack, not on a rally stage.