Audi in motorsport in the pre quattro era

[Holger Merten]

Everybody is talking about the great success of Audi with the quattro in the rally-championship between 1981 and 1987. But Audi already raced before: In the late sixties and the seventies Audi was engaged in rally sport, and touring car sport. For example in 1973 an Audi 100 Coupé S started in Spa 24 h in the Division one. It was the Audi France car at Spa 1973 of Dupré/Boucher. A 41st starting position meant that it wasn't really competitive. But it finished a creditable 12th however.

The car was homologated in group 1 (5000 cars/year) in 1971. So who does know more? Here is a picture of that car in front of the old Audi R&D Dept.

http://www.bart.nl/~brun/audiclass.jpg

Later on Audi France started in Spa with the Audi 80 GT/GTE and Audi was engaged in Touring car sport with the Audi 80 GTE with Hans Joachim Nowak (Audi Engineer racing for years for Audi and part of the quattro motor sport team.) and Harald Ertl in the European championship. Here is Heralds Audi-Team card with autogramm. It's the 1977 "Grosser Preis der Tourenwagen" on the Nürburgring with his co-driver was Hans Joachim Nowak.

[cybersdorf]

And let's not forget the DKWs that competed in British touring cars - as seen at this year's Goodwood Revival.

[josvandeperre]

Stirling Moss did a brief comenback in the UK in Audi 80's as I recall

[Holger Merten]

Thanks, I know about Moss and the DKWs, also in Germany, there was a great engagement from private drivers on DKW in the 50s/60s and on Audi in the late 70s. But from a historical point of view, I’m interested in the time in between. From 1966 to 1980. When I was working in the Audi public relations department in traditional affairs, we always used the Auto Union silverarrow era, and the great time of the quattros to make pr. Okay, nice to have (and to drive). But I want to know who believed in Audi in motorsport, why (cause Ford and BMW seemed to be unbeatable). Was it only fun. Why was Audi France so engaged, cause they used the most cars at that time. What did Audi do in that time? I know they prepared some Audi Super 90 in the late 60s for rallysport.

[Aysedasi]

Originally posted by cybersdorf
And let's not forget the DKWs that competed in British touring cars - as seen at this year's Goodwood Revival.

And there was I thinking the DKW at Le Mans last weekend was a Debora - silly me.........

[Fab]

Originally posted by Aysedasi
And there was I thinking the DKW at Le Mans last weekend was a Debora - silly me

I've always thought you're too much a Debora fan anyway... that's why you see Deboras everywhere !

(PS : sorry for this serious thread, Holger, Jos and Cy... but Ayse and I are really cheerful for a long time after the past WE...)

[Holger Merten]

Thank you so far...

Actually I found something about Audi Super 90 in a Rally Bangkok - Singapur in 1969. And an Audi 80 (Type B1, thats the first series) in Rallysport in the mid 70ies.