Driving an S1 replica through Audi's home town on the company's centenary reminds NICK HALLwhy the car is so good
KIDS RUN after us with camera phones as we slow for the lights, begging us to gun it, and as we roll into McDonald’s, the locals’ jaws hit the floor. But it was a series of outrageous drifts across the land that finally spread the word of the prodigal son’s unscheduled and extreme lap of honour around its home town of Ingolstadt, Bavaria.
It is Audi’s centennial celebration, and while pristine show cars were set up in the square for the pomp and ceremony ahead, we marked Audi’s 100th birthday the old-fashioned way – by storming the town in the S1 Quattro E2.
But how did we get Audi to release a car worth about €300,000, and steeped in history, to go dicing with the traffic in town on a makeshift rally stage?
We didn’t, of course. This isn’t one of the original 20 S1 Quattros that helped redefine rallying but it is as close as you’re likely to get: this is Motoren Technik Mayer’s S1 replica.
Roland Mayer’s base in Wettstetten is just a stone’s throw from Audi’s gates and he produces tuned Audis with near obscene levels of power, including a 700bhp RS6 and a very special R8 that has yet to be unveiled. But the S1 is his private toy, his passion.
He bought the car from a Finnish enthusiast who had started his own Sport Quattro conversion 12 years ago, and finished with a carbon-kevlar body from Audi Sport and parts sourced from “friends”. It is a replica, yet lumping it in with the hoi polloi would be unfair. Audi invited the car to join its celebrations and drive in the official centennial parade the day after our antics, and if it’s good enough for them . . .
It certainly felt real enough as I sat on the gravel road, on a disused American military base that could easily stage a WRC round. With adrenaline pumping and the car straining and rocking with each determined blip of the throttle, and with 530bhp ready to explode onto the road beneath, sweat gathering on my brow, it felt mighty damned real. The Metro 6R4, Peugeot 205 T16, Renault R5 Turbo, Lancia Delta S4 are among the immortals in the motoring world, but the S1 is the car everyone remembers from the Group B era, rallying’s greatest time.
These were insane cars, with almost 600bhp and 990kg kerbweights, with a greater power-to-weight ratio than a Bugatti Veyron in the early 1980s.
An apocryphal tale has it that Henri Toivenen took his Lancia Delta S4 to Estoril and his time would have placed him fourth on the F1 grid, yet these cars were flung down gravel roads, through ravines, and up mountains, in conditions ranging from sub-tropical to sub-zero while the drivers danced a jog on all three pedals. They were marvels, and the men and women who drove them were heroes – with 1,000-yard stares that could drive a rocket on sheet ice, and often did.
This was the most famous sled of all and blipping the throttle on my own private start line, with the 530bhp straining underneath me, made me feel overawed.
The whole car rocks as I hit the 4,500rpm required for a flying start and the ear-bleeding five cylinder noise rattles the cabin as an involuntary choke rises thanks to the fumes and vibrations.
Walter Rohrl, widely lauded as the greatest rally driver ever, said the S1 in its fieriest form felt like a bomb going off at the start line. He’s right.
We’re riding on Pilot Sport Cup tyres, thanks to the car’s involvement in the Tuner Grand Prix on the Hockenheim circuit just a few weeks earlier, and there’s almost no purchase on the slippery stones and gravel underfootthat peppers the underfloor like machinegun fire.
That’s possibly a good thing. On tarmac it hits 100km/h in 3.4 seconds, faster than the modern-day R8 V10, and while we’re making slower progress it feels a hell of a lot more dramatic as the nose snuffles across the gravel like a truffle-hunting pig. The rally cars came with an 8,500rpm limit and a trick turbo for more power and anti-lag, but for the sake of longevity and his wallet Mayer opted for a simpler set-up.
He took a 2.2-litre Sport Quattro engine and built it up with forged pistons, a hybrid T26/27 KKK turbocharger and a number of genuine Audi Sport parts, including the air intake and manifold. He then limited it to 7,000rpm, which gives similar power output without the expense or grief. It did, however, give us just 2,000rpm and very short gears to work with, the top speed of this car is just 220km/h – you don’t need more on a mountain road.
Then, cornering – well, that’s a new skill in a car like this, as I find out when skating onto the grass on my first timid run. Lift off and you slide off; that’s the simple rule with this car.
It takes total commitment and you need to throw it in to the corner on full boost to get through to the other side. But, driven even close to right, it is sublime: everything you could possibly imagine and more.
With just 1,090kg over the wheels, it’s almost Lotus Exige light, and somehow even more responsive, reacting to the slightest twitch of the wheel and slipping back into line on request.
Everything happens too fast and it feels like the inside of a tumble dryer in the hot seat, but the car whips through the bend on opposite lock like the Tasmanian Devil and yet somehow stays on our makeshift road.
Our drive was just playing on a wide gravel road with soft grass on one side. The Group B stars, however, were at maximum attack, with a cliff face for company, walls of spectators lining the road and brakes that seemingly don’t work.
That’s not strictly true about the brakes, but these are competition pads and they need heat to work, heat that we can’t really build up as the car needs to rest after every short stint, as do we.
The downside is that pressure on the middle pedal elicits a screeching noise, which is more of an issue in town where I end up stamping on the anchors more than once before trying to look suave in the face of 1,000 open-mouthed stares.
The Goup B era came to an end with Toivonen’s untimely death in 1986, after his Delta S4 plunged down a ravine.
The cars were simply too fast and too powerful, said the governing body.
So the curtain was drawn early on the S1, which never truly backed up its reputation with results and in fact wasn’t nearly as successful as its long-wheelbase predecessor.
But that was decades ago, and tall tales and decades of shaky video footage have immortalised the Audi S1 and created a legend. In the public psyche, the S1 is the ultimate rally car.
And for my money it’s the ultimate Audi. I slow to a crawl back in town, to feel the reaction from passers-by and bask in the glory of driving the most famous Audi ever, kind of, through its home town.
It was the icon’s homecoming, the return of Audi’s prodigal son and I, for one, was privileged to take it on this amazing lap of honour.
Factfile: Audi MTM S1 Quattro
Price: Not for sale
Engine: 2.2-litre Turbo
Power: 530bhp @ 7,000rpm
Torque: 545lb/ft @ 4,900rpm
0-100km/h: 3.4 seconds
Top speed: 220km/h