Quattro, we look back at 40 years of the legendary Audi all-wheel drive

The Quattro all-wheel drive has just turned 40 years old, an important anniversary for the brand of the four rings. Four decades have passed since the German manufacturer began fitting its models with Quattro technology.

Quattro changed the history of rallying, high-performance racing cars and, above all, the image of the brand of the four rings. Notably, Audi has already sold more than ten million vehicles with Quattro all-wheel drive to date.

The birth of Quattro began in 1976, when Jörg Bensinger, the chassis engineer of the brand of the four rings, realized that a Volkswagen Iltis outperformed the Audi on snow and ice. The model from the German group was a 4×4 similar to a Jeep with a military design.

This same engineer had set out to create a new high-performance vehicle that would deliver power thanks to its five-cylinder turbo engine. It would be paired with a transmission with all-wheel drive, but it had to be the lightest and most efficient on the market.

Quattro, a safe bet

In January 1978, the same chassis engineer developed a prototype based on the Audi 80 that was driven by Ferdinand Piëch through the snowy hills of Austria. This concept was capable of climbing the hills even with summer tyres. As for the name, the brand of the four rings went back and forth on it until Walter Treser, one of the engineers responsible for the new drivetrain, had the inspiration. The name Quattro comes from the ‘Quadra-trac of Jeep’ system, meaning four in Italian.

The Quattro system of Audi was designed for road use rather than off-road, so it had to be much more elegant than what drivers already knew. The entire system had to be housed inside the main gearbox casing. The secret? Passing a driveshaft through a set of hollow gears to reach the front differential, as well as the rear wheels. In addition, the system incorporated a manually lockable central differential.

It was not until 1980 that it was presented at the Geneva Motor Show, and within a few months the models reached the road. Two years later, drivers could choose between the Audi 80, the Audi 90, the Audi 100 and the Audi 200.

Torsen, another innovation to improve traction

The name stands for TORque-SENsing and refers to the new central differential that was installed in the Audi from 1987 onwards. The first model to be equipped with it? The Audi 90 quattro and the coupé based on the Audi 90. This technology is capable of sending up to 80% of torque to the axle with the greater grip.

Audi raises its bet on quattro all-wheel drive

Traditionally rear-wheel-drive cars from BMW and Mercedes-Benz, specifically their sporty divisions BMW M and Mercedes-AMG, were more fun to drive, but the brand of the four rings bet on its system and included a differential called Active Sport in 2008. According to the German manufacturer itself, it was “a clutch package on each driveshaft to vary the torque sent to each outer rear wheel to promote oversteer.”

With the arrival of the Audi e-tron in 2019, the quattro system became even more necessary, as it has enormous amounts of torque at its disposal. The torque to each axle is controlled electronically, with the driver able to choose between seven preset dynamic profiles.