Description
?It is a rally weapon in civilian clothes, a means of transport where performance comes first. Driving a Quattro is a mind-blowing experience.? It is the opinion of Ric van Kempen, in the Autovisie of January 1981. The great thing is: these words are not about the Audi Quattro in general, but about this specific Audi Quattro that you see here. This concerns the first Quattro delivered in the Netherlands, the car that served as a press car for importer PON and was therefore featured in countless magazines. The GL-79-XB is not just any Quattro but the extremely early and rare homologation examples with ?Sielzüge-sperren? (cable-operated locks).
The car belonged to PON in 1980 and 1981 and then had a different owner. The car remains in sight of the radar and around 2010 the car ends up in the hands of the owner who does what the car deserves at that time: an extreme restoration. Like many 1980s cars, the Audi is of course exposed to wind and weather and it is characteristic of cars from that period that they do not cope very well with it. What follows is a car down to the bare bone and even that bone is still being completely addressed. Photos of this are available, it shows that the car has been restored to full 1980 specifications and is still in top condition.
The idea for the Audi ?Urquattro? arose after the Audi 100 was presented to the press in Scandinavia in the 1970s. Wet, slippery, ice, snow: for the event they had brought a few Volkswagen Iltis, a handy little 4×4 off-road vehicle for driving around. Jörg Bensinger, test driver at Audi, drove the car and thought that such a system in a road car would not be a bad idea at all. He took the plan to Ferdinand Piëch and the system found its way to Audi: the Quattro was born.
Of course, it was not yet known that Audi would have a rally legend in its hands with the Quattro, but that is how the Quattro went down in history. Together with the Lancia Delta and other rally legends, the four-wheel drive German coupe is now one of the most sought-after cars from the 1980s.
You will rarely if ever encounter an Urquattro like this. One of the first copies produced, the first registered in the Netherlands, reports in numerous leading magazines, both then and now, a binder full of documentation and invoices, brochures and photo negatives from the early 1980s. A legend in terms of car, a legend in terms of Dutch history.
If you are in the market for such a car, we probably don?t have to explain anything more about the technology, but for the sake of completeness we will mention what we are dealing with here. The photo in front of you is one of the 400 homologation specials built. Of those 400, it is also a very early example. The press praised the performance at the time, such as Bart van den Acker who wrote in Autorevue: ?The acceleration, however, turns out to be one of the most impressive aspects, especially when we do the rocket start from a standstill.? The measurement data shows that the Audi reaches 100 km/ h in just 6. 5 seconds, a value in those years that puts the Quattro right in the middle of sports car territory. It is therefore compared to cars such as the Porsche 911 SC and BMW 635 CSi. While the two competitors have a six-cylinder, the Audi is equipped with an amazing five-cylinder turbo engine that has its origins in the Audi 200. However, the engine has been considerably modified, including an intercooler. The result? 200 hp for a car weighing 1, 290 kilograms.
You can tell: we are quite enthusiastic about this car. Not just because of the countless championships that its rally brothers managed to achieve, nor just because of its appearance and driving characteristics. No, the total package of this car, including the history and condition of this specific Quattro, makes it a unique classic.
