Audi Quattro Classic Automobile

It has long been realized that four is the ideal number of wheels to have on a car, and, for more than 60 years, that brakes on all four wheels are the best way of stopping it. The same ideals apply to propelling a car, yet it was only recently that any manufacturer was able to produce a viable way of driving all four wheels. It was Audi - an upmarket division of the giant Volkswagen combine - which caused a sensation throughout the motoring world in 1980, when it announced its advanced four-wheel-drive, high performance road car - the Quattro.

In the years before the Audi Quattro made its first appearance in 1980, all previous four-wheel-drive systems had foundered through high cost, weight, bulkiness, poor efficiency or unsatisfactory behaviour on the road. Four-wheel drive became commercially viable for ordinary cars once shafts had been made with joints strong enough to enable the front wheels to move in any direction as they were driven, were steered, or absorbed road shock..

 Like most other motor manufacturers, Audi quickly established a range of front-wheel-drive vehicles which offered more room for passengers because they did not need the shaft from the rear-wheel-drive days that connected the engine at the front to the wheels at the back. This was especially important in the smallest cars, where space was at a premium. For four-wheel drive to become a reality in a mass-produced car, all that was needed was a means of harnessing the rear wheels to the front without the harsh, noisy, heavy and expensive complication of a secondary gearbox, like that used on previous all-wheeldrive vehicles.

The answer came when Volkswagen and Mercedes became involved in a competition to design a new off-road vehicle for the German army as an alternative to the truck-like Land-Rover and its derivatives. To the surprise of many observers, the Audi arm of Volkswagen won the contest in 1978 with a vehicle called the litis, using four-wheel drive for maximum traction and braking on slippery surfaces, and an equally surprising five-cylinder engine. In essence, the litis system was far superior to its predecessors because it was based around two shafts, one running inside the other, which were lighter and quieter, occupied less space, and did not need so much power to operate as the previous profusion of cogs and spindles. The incorporation of three differentials in the driveline - one in each axle and one in the gearbox - also helped to cut dramatically the increase in fuel consumption and tyre wear, which had always been a bugbear on four-wheeldrive vehicles.

The five-cylinder engine had already been introduced in the larger Audis. This unit proved to be a good compromise between the space-saving qualities of a conventional fourcylinder unit and the inherent smoothness of a six-cylinder. It did not take much imagination to realize what such a compact and efficient pairing could do in a car, but the concept was still too unconventional for Volkswagen's management to accept it immediately. However, one of their leading engineers Waiter Treser, was a keen rally driver and fitted a small Audi 80 saloon with the litis transmission to demonstrate how well it would handle on loosely surfaced roads. Once more, to everybody's surprise, it was not only good on the rough, but much better on smooth roads, too. Treser needed only to demonstrate to Audi's chief salesmen that his fourwheel- drive prototype could climb the most difficult snow-covered mountain in Austria to win an audience with Volkswagen's top management

In this case, Treser used the hoses of a factory fire engine to turn a local hillside into a greasy quagmire which only his prototype could climb, and finally got the go-ahead for production. The system was first introduced on a new top model in the Audi range, a muscular coupe which could use a turbocharger now that it was possible to convey through all four wheels the extra power and torque which the front two would not have been able to handle on their own. In fact the big turbo coupe - called the Quattro after its pioneering four wheel drive system proved so fast and surefooted that it dominated world rallying for years. And the four-wheeldrive system was introduced as an option throughout the rest of Audi's range of predominantly medium and large-size cars, where its advantages made up for the slightly bigger space it occupied. The extent of Audi's achievement can be gauged from the fact that it took several years for the rest of the world's car companies to catch up.