The First AWD Performance Car To Go Mainstream
If you start up a lot of high-performance cars these days, chances are the power will go to all four wheels. With power outputs going into four figures for some cars, with even some pickups reaching that kind of number, channeling the engine’s might through just the rears is a big ask. But all-wheel-drive performance cars are still a particularly new thing, with many of us being able to remember when it was a novelty. But which performance car paved the way for AWD to become the norm in Sports Cars? Let’s take a look.
All-Wheel-Drive Is Everywhere These Days
Walk into a Lamborghini dealership in 1993 and the salesman would likely have guided you over to a new Diablo model sitting in the showroom. It looked pretty much like any other Diablo, but on the back, in small letters, it said “VT.” This small badge signified one of the biggest changes to a Lamborghini since Ferruccio put a V12 in the middle of a Miura. The letters stand for Viscous Traction, the all-wheel-drive (AWD) version of the supercar, which used a viscous center differential developed from the LM002’s 4WD system to direct up to 25% of the torque to the front wheels.
Aside from the groundbreaking Porsche 959 of 1986, which wasn’t sold in America, this would have been one of the first high-performance cars anyone had ever heard of with all-wheel-drive. By the 2000s, everyone was at it, with everything from a Bugatti Veyron to an Audi R8 deploying an all-wheel-drive system for better traction.
The Tech Was (Almost) Strictly For Off-Roaders In The ’60s And ’70s
If you took a time machine back to the ’60s or ’70s and told people that supercars had four-wheel-drive, they probably would have laughed. The Willys Jeep came out of WW2 to become the world’s first mass-produced civilian four-wheel drive. The Series 1 Land Rover had launched just after the war, in the late ’40s, and was Britain’s version of the utilitarian 4WD off-roader. Not many people would have seen the point in powering all four wheels, aside from getting across a plowed field. That is, aside from the people over at British boutique sports carmaker Jensen. Between 1966 and 1971, the company produced the Jensen Interceptor FF, the first four-wheel-drive grand tourer in the world, but just 320 units were made (says Hagerty), and all in right-hand drive. But a mass-produced AWD car was coming, and this one would change the world.
Audi’s Ur-Quattro Was The First AWD Mainstream Performance Car
When the original (or Ur, as a German prefix) launched at the Geneva Motor Show in 1980, it perhaps didn’t look that revolutionary. It looked quite a lot like the B2 Coupé that arrived alongside it: a boxy three-door with a fastback rear that had shades of a muscle car about its silhouette. But under the skin, the car was a game changer. Basing the car on the humdrum 80 model, Audi fitted a turbocharged five-cylinder engine that powered all four 15-inch wheels. The 2.1-liter, single-overhead-cam inline-five was good for a healthy 172 horsepower, showing this was not some Audi designed for the farmyard. The engine was connected to a five-speed manual. But it was the way that Audi had tackled the AWD system that made it groundbreaking.
The Ur-Quattro Was Groundbreaking
Audi had originally looked at utilizing the four-wheel-drive system of the Volkswagen Iltis military truck, but the transfer cases were heavy and cumbersome. Audi had its eyes on dominating rallying and realized that if it could perfect the AWD hardware, it would have a distinct advantage over the rear-drive Datsuns and Fiats. Using the 80 sedan’s FWD transaxle layout as the basis, Audi ran a driveshaft straight out of the gearbox to the rear axle, turning a differential mounted behind the gearbox. In total, the system used three mechanical differentials to distribute torque between the front and rear wheels.
The driver had a vacuum-operated switch to lock the center differential, which locked the front and rear differentials together. The Quattro set-up was lighter than a lot of antiquated 4WD systems, allowing it to be applied to a performance car. In the late-1980s, Audi added a Torsen (short for torque-sensing) differential that automatically split power 50:50 from front to rear.
The Quattro Was A New Type Of Fast Car
|
Engine |
Turbocharged 2.1-liter five |
|
Power |
160 hp |
|
Torque |
170 lb-ft |
Both front- and rear-drive platforms had positives and negatives, but it was largely the negatives that were accentuated on muddy rally stages. Front-drive cars tended to understeer heavily and scrambled for traction. While rear-wheel drive was useful for getting the power down and creating big, arching power slides, the latter came at the expense of outright speed. By powering all four wheels, the Audi Quattro had better traction everywhere, especially on loose surfaces. No wonder that Audi won the World Rally Championship (WRC) manufacturers’ title in 1982 and 1984.
On the road, the showroom Quattro was capable and easy to drive quickly. With 60 mph arriving in 7.8 seconds and the quarter mile covered in 15.8 seconds, it wasn’t the fastest car on the road in a straight line, but it would get from A to B quicker than almost anything. With a $38,000 base price, it wasn’t cheap either, but it was considerably less than a supercar of the time.
The Quattro Changed Performance Cars For Good
The Quattro’s effect could be seen almost immediately. Almost every other manufacturer rushed to bring all-wheel-drive monsters to the rally scene, and by the end of the ’80s the Japanese were perfecting this technology. Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evos and Subaru’s Impreza WRX STIs showed how turbocharged engines (in these cases four-cylinder units) and clever AWD technology could be developed to rule rallying. Just like the Ur-Quattro, which was sold up until 1991 in 227 hp form with a four-valve head and dual overhead cams, the Evo and WRX also had road versions that could run rings around sports cars, albeit with the kind of sedan bodies that could be used for shopping or the school run.
But the Quattro’s influence didn’t stop there. When Audi acquired Lamborghini in 1998, it quickly developed the AWD supercar, bringing out the Gallardo and later its own R8 as usable supercars with all-weather traction. Since then, AWD on supercars has no longer been seen as fun-sapping, but rather as necessary to make them enjoyable in the real world, not just on a dry Sunday afternoon.
The Quattro Is No Longer Cheap
Despite its competition heritage, the Ur-Quattro isn’t particularly rare, with Hagerty noting that Audi sold nearly 11,500 examples, but just 664 came to the US. But dwindling numbers (many likely ended up in a ditch) and the iconic status of the model mean they are no longer accessible to most car enthusiasts.
A 1984 car will cost $49,500 in good condition. The 1985 “Sport Quattro,” which featured a shortened wheelbase and wider track, was limited to just 224 road-going versions and sells for $530,000.
Sources: Hagerty
Related posts
Latest Post
No Comments