Audi Ur Quattro: Where it all began
Audi Ur Quattro: Where it all began
8:56

Audi Ur Quattro: Where it all began

Cars
[MUSIC] This year quatro is blowing up 14 candles on his birthday cake. We thought what better way to celebrate and been driving an original watch [MUSIC] Dr. Porter was around for over a decade and during that time, there were three versions demarcated by the engines. The first is a WR engine which was a 2.1. In line turbocharged five-cylinder With ten valves single overhead cam. Next was the MB engine introduced in 1987. Still with ten valves and a single overhead cam, the capacity had gone up to 2.2 liters. Then you have this, the RR. barrier to the ultimate try reading. And this has double overhead cams 20 hours, how I went from 200 brake horsepower at five and a half 1000 RPM to 220 brake horsepower 5900 rpm. That's more significantly, torque increased from 199 pounds foot at 3000 RPM, 228 pounds foot at a meal 1950 rpm. We'll talk a little bit more about this specific car in a bit, but first, well, let's talk about quattro. The four wheel drive system shouldn't be really The origins of Quattro are found in military vehicles. Most people trace the idea for Quattro to the VW Altis. The Story goes that in the mid-1970s Audi's head of chassis engineering Jorg Bensinger was on a test with various high-powered front-wheel drive cars. He noticed that despite being far as powerful the guiltiest that was there as a support car could outperform the test vehicle. He mentioned this to volta trezor, head of special vehicle Development Authority, who then thought why not put this four wheel drive technology in a passenger car instead of an off road vehicle. This proposal went to the head or r&d, Ferdinand piac, and the rest, as they say, is history. But let's just go back to that Vw iltis for a second. You see the iltis was itself based on a very successful military vehicle called a moonga, which is an acronym for multipurpose universal offroad car with all wheel drive. But in German, obviously, anyway, the manga was built by DK W, which was part of auto union. And when auto union is bought by VW in 1960, it was rebranded as Audi. So the Audi Quattro came from a VW that was based on an Audi sort of. Anyway, the Innovative thing about the new Quattro system is its way of getting round the need for a heavy transfer case or second prop shaft. The solution was a hollow shaft that drove the center def from the back of the gear box.. This hollow shaft could then accommodate an output shaft, taking power from the center diff to the front wheels. The first quarter had three open differentials, the central rear, which could be manually locked, initially via cables, then a pneumatic switch system, but then in 1987 that changed to what we have in this car. A torsen center diff torsen is a mash up of torque sensing and really, it's a toss in the center diff that is defined quatro for most of the 40 years. In this car, we have a T one. Type torsen diff, which is 50/50. Later they went to a two three type, which is where you can split the talk. So you have 14 down to the front and 60% going to the rear as standard before and obviously Chevy's around. There have obviously been other types of Quattro the original rH use a viscous coupling for example, while the modern transverse engine cars Use a haldex system to apportion the drive for and aft. Incidentally, the rear diff in this car remains manually lockable for low speed low traction situations. You can turn the ABS off as well if you need to. The other major thing that this car say really made famous is the turbocharged straightened five cylinder engine. I'm not gonna go through the whole history of string fires now but the reason Frustrating five really is smoothness. The refinement gained over a four cylinder engine is pronounced. It's even better in a straight six. But the Law of Diminishing Returns kicks in and the extra length over a five would provide packaging problems. So it's a compromise I suppose. One of the interesting things about. A five cylinder engine is that they didn't really come in until fuel injection was widely available because of the carburetor setup. One big carb means the flow passed to the outer cylinders get rather long to medium carbs and a smaller one however, is just a bit more crude for tuning. It's the reason that there were five cylinder diesel engines ran before by some of the petrol engines because obviously. I would feel injected. Other things to talk about with this specific car well in this last line this our our quatro is lovely three spoke well which feels just about perfect in terms of size and simplicity and everything. There's even more leather in here we got the fantastic quatro fabric, On the seats, interestingly, there's really no contrary budging at all you just have the silver, four rings on the boat. As a little aside, courtroom almost wasn't called quatro. Originally it was going to be called carrot, not the vegetable but ca ra t which is an acronym for coupe all rad entry turbo. [MUSIC] Luckily there was a Cartier perfume called carrot. So they went with the Italian for for instead a good decision, I think. Anyway, back to the interior. The dash changed for this latest car as well. Originally, in the very early cars, they had normal dials, but then in 1983 quite a lot of changes came in And they went to a digital dash initially that was green in terms of the scripts, but for this one, it's changed orange and I love that it's so simple. I love having the buttons up here because everything is to hand and it just works. You can You can even simplify the dash even more by pressing this down here. And then you lose everything on either side. You just have the speedo in the middle of the time down there, which is like a track screen, which you get nowadays, which people crow about, but here it is. It's already here. What's this fella's drive today? Still remarkably good. I've actually done an awful lot of miles in this car, and it's It's very comfortable we got a nice lot of suspension travel is still quite a bit of roll in the corners, even though this has a 20 millimeter suspension dropping compared to the early cars. The rear anti roll bar for the very first cause is also removed for later iterations. While this last line quarto has forged alloy wishbones rather than Pressed Steel. Once, Control I suppose as we've come to expect it's not playful surfing on the road. You can see how that left foot braking can help but it feels remarkably grown-up. Yes refers to the creeks in here as you can hear from the seats and things like that. But mechanically it feels Remarkably solid, the gear shift is nice. It's quite loose across the gate, but it is really tactile as it goes into gears. It pusher actually, possibly because the gear knob reminds me suppose of a nice six, four or even 993 gear knob. pedals are not very well placed for healing. Turning the engine given it's old school and turbocharged you might think it would be really laggy but she's surprisingly responsive. I'm not sure I'd want her attempt to Not 60 and 5.9 seconds which is what they claimed back in the day. But you can certainly hustle it [LAUGH]. Overall today It feels more like a sporting gt than that like sports car. It's long wheelbase and that Ford's long engine meaning it's a car to be rushed and transitions. You can certainly see why a short wheelbased version was desirable. But that's along with frame splitting wing rally cars with the likes of Michelin, Mouton, Lundquist, and Roll behind the wheel is another story, as is driving up a ski slope. Suffice to say that in the last 40 years Audi has produced over 10 million cars with quatro. A land which is set to continue for many years to come. As quatro will continue on with Audi's etron electric cars. It is hard to really overstate the importance Quattro the system and really Quattro the car to Audi and its success. It's phenomenal success in the last 40 years. Happy Birthday Quattro [MUSIC]

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