40 years ago, the company presented the Audi quattro with the four rings, taking a big step into the premium segment in its long history. On the occasion of this anniversary, Audi Tradition will open a new special exhibition in the Audi museum mobile in Ingolstadt on June 1, 2020 (until February 28, 2021): “IN BETWEEN”. The show shows the path of the Audi quattro from the past through the present to the future and presents a wealth of studies and contemporary motorsport witnesses from the past 40 years.
Since the Ur-quattro made its debut at the Geneva Motor Show in 1980, the principle of four driven wheels has developed into one of the brand’s strongest pillars.
To date, Audi has produced almost 10.5 million quattro-powered cars. An impressive success, which is certainly not meant to be a final statement, but only an interim status that gives an incentive to continue the success story. This is especially true at a time when a lot is changing. Because the automotive industry is changing: we are right in the middle – IN BETWEEN – in a transformation that is determined by the search for new drive technologies and digitalization. What is certain is that the past 40 years have only been the beginning of a development
So it goes on and it will be interesting to see what “Fascination quattro” will have in the future. A small impression of this is given by the new special exhibition in the Audi museum mobile, which not only shows some of the milestones from 40 years of quattro history, but also provides an outlook with current studies of how the quattro principle will look in the future. An Audi Ur-quattro and an Audi Sport quattro are not to be missed in the exhibition. For the first time, the “Audi ski jump vehicles” are gathered in one place: the Audi 100 CS quattro in which Harald Demuth drove up the ski jump in Kaipola in Finland in 1986, the Audi A6 4.2 quattro in which Uwe Bleck repeated the trip in 2005 at the same location and finally the Audi e-tronwith which Mattias Ekström mastered the 40.4 degree slope of the legendary Streif in Kitzbühel. The Audi 100 is represented by an identical model, the other two cars are the original vehicles.
The quattro legend started in March 1980: During the Geneva Motor Show, an all-wheel drive, sporty coupé caused a sensation. For the first time, the Audi quattro was a high-performance vehicle with permanent all-wheel drive, a drive concept that until then had only been used on trucks and off-road vehicles. The idea for such a four-wheel drive passenger car came up in the winter of 1976/77 during test drives with the VW Iltis off-road vehicle that was being developed for the Bundeswehr by Audi. The excellent driving behavior of this off-road vehicle on ice and snow led to the idea of trying the all-wheel drive in a more powerful road vehicle. The result was a sporty Audi coupé called quattro. The feed was provided by a variant of the 2.2 liter five-cylinder turbo engine, which had been increased in performance to 147 kW / 200 hp. The Audi quattro made its official motorsport debut in early 1981 at the January Rally in Austria. From then on, the four-wheel powerhouse from Ingolstadt revolutionized the international rally and racing scene.
A special element awaits visitors to the exhibition. Actually planned for the canceled Geneva Motor Show, the Audi museum mobile presents an installation of wildly jumbled television sets on which rally films from the Audi archive and privately will run in an endless loop.
