Audi were not the first to make a four-wheel-drive sports coupé, but
crucially, they were the first to make one in volume and in doing so
totally rewrote the performance car handbook. It was so obviously better
in nearly every way that rival car makers scrambled to catch up and it
is due to the quattro that so many cars now use four-wheel-drive.
Launched in 1980 it remained available for 11 years and, such was the
car’s significance, that Audi substantially updated what was by then an
outmoded but iconic car and produced the fastest and most potent version
during its last two years of production, the legendary quattro 20
Valve.