History

A further advanced model Audi Sport quattro was developed to meet the competition in rally sport. The body and wheelbase of the Sport quattro were 32 cm shorter over the rear side windows, the steeper angle of the windshield was borrowed from the Audi 80 and large parts of the car were built in Kevlar and aluminum to save weight. This model was classified in the new Group B by producing the 200 street legal copies required to allow competition with the car. Frenchwoman Michelle Mouton competed in Pikes Peak international hillclimb with the car and won both year1984 and in 1985, when she also broke the record on the slopes.

Audi Sport quattro S1 Evo2 debuted at the Finnish rally in 1985, where it was recognizable by  vulgar screen wideners, front spoiler and rear wing. The regulations in Group B allowed evolutionary models such as this to be made as long as the requirement of 20 manufactured cars was met. The Audi Sport quattro S1 Evo2 was used at the Austrian Semperit rally with an early variant of the Porsche dual-clutch gearbox PDK developed for Porsche’s Le Mans racers. The PDK box gave the car an enormous performance through its seamless full throttle gears, so much so that the legendary Audi engineer Dieter Basche, who had previously ridden quietly next to Walter Röhrl for countless miles of testing, said ”never again”. Röhrl’s map reader Geistdorfer found it difficult to keep the rhythm due to the seamless gear changes.

1986 was to be Group B’s last season due to a series of serious accidents involving both crews and spectators. Audi decided to abandon the WRC halfway through the season as it also turned out that the competing mid-engined cars from mainly Peugeot & Lancia had become too difficult to beat. The Audi Sport quattro S1 Evo2’s last official competition was with a variant of the car with even larger wings and a sharper engine which, with Walter Röhrl behind the wheel, set a new record in the 1987 Pikes Peak international hillclimb.