Description
By: Brooklands Books .
The original 1980 Audi Quattro was a masterpiece of marketing. Its makers took their averagely attractive coupe body, endowed it with real performance from a turbocharged five cylinder engine (high technology for the time), and added four wheel drive for road-holding and traction. The result was a car which made headlines on the rally scene and attracted impressed clients to the Audi showrooms.
Before long the magic of the quattro (Audi perversely used a small Q in its marketing) rubbed off onto other Audi models. As the tests in this book show, the four wheel drive element had found its way down to family saloons long before the end of the decade, and much of the glamour associated with the original had been diluted. None of that, however, stopped other manufacturers from jumping onto the bandwagon and introduced their own 4x4 versions of road cars first, not always adding the dash of performance spice which had been so essential to the original Audi concept.
Four wheel drive nevertheless failed to catch the public imagination in a big way. Most people tended to associate it with off road vehicles, arguing that it was unnecessary on an ordinary road car. Anyone who has actually driven a four wheel drive road car will nevertheless be in no doubt about its virtues, and many of the articles here make clear what they are. But is a four-wheel drive Audi really superior to the front-wheel drive equivalent? Is a 325iX better than an Audi 90 Quattro? The best way to find out is to read the expert opinions in this book.
Experts from 3 continents compare the Quattro against 4x4s such as BMW, Ford Sierra and Cosworth, Lancia Delta and many more...
Models include: 80, 4000S, 90, 200 Avant Estate, CS, 5000CS, S2, 90 20V, Coupe, 100 2.8E, V8, A6 Wagon, A4, A6 TDi, A8 4.2, A3 1.8t, TT Coupe & A4 2.8.
