autocar on the ur-qauttro 20v.

[Dave.Eaton]

rather than scan the article autocar used to describe the quattro in
awarding it 3rd in the list of the top 100 performance cars, i've copied the
text below...

dave
’95 rs2
’90 ur-q
-------------------

Icons of the 20th century don't come more celebrated than this.  The
Quattro, launched in 1984, changed our ideas of what a car could do.
Four-wheel drive hasn't been thought of in the same way since.

Audi's application of science hunted down the old-guard supercar
establishment and proved that, stripped bare, driving equals performance,
braking, handling and grip - all the rest is window dressing.  It changed
everything.  The chunky Audi's mix of grip and grunt was so far ahead of the
game that hard-nosed hacks were baffled by it.

Yet that wasn't the really clever bit. What made the quattro concept so
sensible and enduring was that it was largely a humdrum amalgam of stock
parts bolted together in an extraordinary way.  The result became a rallying
legend spawning generations of point-to-point exemplars that were also
culled from mainstream components: the Lancia Delta Turbo, Ford Escort
Cosworth, Subaru Impreza Turbo, Mitsibishi Lancer Evo.

The Quattro shaped the genre of affordable supercars for ordinary blokes.
And, as you might expect, they upped the ante one by one.  But not so much
that they rendered the original inept.  Far from it.  The Quattro had
evolved too, and in its final 1990 220hp 20-valve incarnation, was such a
potent weapon on a winding road, that its currency hasn't significantly
devalued in 10 years.  Look at the performance stats for a start: 141 mph,
0-100mph in 18 seconds.  Still on the pace.

But the Quattro isn't just about straightline stuff.  Push hard in the turn
and it finds acceleration where lesser cars find wheelspin, or a close
encounter with a hedge.  There may be faster cars in a straight line, ones
that can pull more lateral g on smooth dry tarmac.  But few despatch real
roads and uncertain conditions with such confidence.  No, make that disdain.

Okay, if we're being completely honest the Audi does understeer a little too
much by contemporary standards.  And its anchors are good rather than great.
But has Audi built a better drivers car?  We think not.