This page attempts to detail the evolution of the quattro. It is meant to be treated as a guide and the quattro Owners Club cannot be held responsible for any errors that may appear it.

The heart of every quattro is its unique 4WD system, the idea can be traced back to the Munga of 1954, which was built by Audi for the German Military, however it was the Iltis of 1967 that gave up its transmission.

The problem of how to transmit power both front and rear without the use of bulky transfer gearboxes was solved by the use of a hollow shaft.
The solution which allowed a front drive, in-line engined Audi to become a permanent 4WD model was a piece of precision engineering.

The centre differential is built into the back of the gearbox, the gearbox primary shaft as an extension of the crankshaft, drives the hollow secondary shaft. This secondary shaft drives the centre differential cage, a solid shaft, running inside the hollow one transmits power from the centre differential to the front and the prop shaft running off the centre differential cage takes drive to the rear.

It was a band of twelve Audi project engineers who, doing unofficial development work on the quattro, proved to VAG management board the effectiveness of permanent 4WD in a car application. Full blessing for the project was granted in November 1977.

The ur-quattro was unveiled on Tuesday 4th March 1980.

The model evolved throughout its production life.

March 1980

1980 model quattro

March 1981

October 1982

December 1983

March 1984

September 1984

March 1985

September 1987

October 1989

Production ends

The original idea was only to build 400 examples to homologate the car for competition, however throughout its eleven year production run 11,452 quattros were manufactured.

The last ur-quattro rolled off the production line on 1 March 1991, which Audi retained for their museum.