Audi was formed by the merger of four companies, so Audi’s logo is four rings in parallel, indicating that before Audi was officially established, it was composed of four automobile companies: AUDI, August Horch, DKW, and Wanderer. Merging manufacturing companies, the four companies work hand in hand and have equal status, just like the four wheels on a car that roll forward, none of them can be missing. In 1965, after the Second World War, the Volkswagen Group acquired the Automobile Alliance, which had been severely weakened after the Second World War, from Daimler-Benz. In 1968, it produced its first car, the first-generation Audi 100, which made the Audi brand very popular. Volkswagen's entry saved the Automobile Alliance and developed Audi into a household name. It can be said that the Volkswagen Group gave Audi a rebirth, and at the same time helped Audi establish a spiritual leader to a certain extent: Quattro and quattro.
Uppercase? lower case?
First of all, neither quattro nor Quattro is a name originally created by Audi. It is just the way the number "4" is written in Italian. To add some additional knowledge, Maserati's four-door executive sedan Quattroporte, the word "porte" is the Italian word for "door", so it is translated as the name of the car for the president. Its original meaning is "four doors". How to become a president? It’s unknown. Therefore, quattro is not a proper noun, it is used as a capital, only in one case, an Audi model named "four", Quattro. After the Quattro model dominated the non-paved road stages of WRC Group B for several years, Audi took advantage of Quattro's popularity and established a wholly-owned quattro GmbH, Audi's high-performance sports department. The letter "Q" is in lower case to show that without Quattro, the god of pulling power, there would be no quattro company. Quattro will always surrender to Quattro. No, it is not so much a king and a minister, but a father-son relationship. I am Uppercase, son is of course lowercase.
The history of Volkswagen's acquisition of the Automobile Alliance is deliberately brought out. The reason is the emergence of Audi Quattro, which is closely related to Volkswagen. During World War II, Volkswagen produced a large number of military vehicles for the German Nazis. Since military transport vehicles also needed to travel through vast unpaved areas to transport various resources to the army, Volkswagen engineers developed a set of efficient, A four-wheel drive system that can intervene based on wheel slippage. Audi's chassis engineer Jorg Bensinger discovered that Volkswagen's four-wheel drive vehicles have surprisingly good road-holding performance on slippery non-paved roads and can drive faster than more powerful front-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive vehicles. The four-wheel drive system can reasonably distribute the driving force to the four wheels. Jorg Bensinger understood it instantly and hatched a pioneering bold idea... In 1980, Audi made the carrier of this idea public for the first time. It was the Audi Quattro, which went on sale at the end of 1980, a car based on the Audi 80 A high-performance coupe based on a door coupe platform, it has aroused a strong response due to its four-wheel drive system and turbocharged engine.
Quattro has Audi's most advanced in-line 5-cylinder longitudinal engine at the time. The turbocharger system squeezes out 200 horsepower from this SOHC engine with two valves per cylinder. You must know that BMW's first-generation M3 also had the same The E30 with an output of 200 horsepower would not be born until five years later in 1985. Quattro introduced an epoch-making four-wheel drive system, although the first generation of quattro required manual switching of whether the center differential and the rear differential were locked through buttons on the center console. It was not until 1987, when quattro GmbH developed the second-generation quattro system, that Quattro finally had a Torsen center differential that automatically sensed front and rear axle slip and locked it, greatly improving the performance of Quattro's four-wheel drive system. In 1989, in the face of the upgrades in the combat power of imaginary enemies such as the E30 M3 and 190E AMG, Quattro also upgraded the inline five-cylinder four-valve engine code-named RR. The extra pair of valves naturally made the engine's intake and exhaust efficiency more efficient. Therefore, it has an increase of 20 horsepower compared to the previous SOHC engine with the same displacement, reaching the level of 220 horses.
Accompanying the power upgrade were a series of small changes, such as increasing the area of ??leather covering the interior of the car, minor changes to the trademark, etc., until the car series was officially discontinued in 1991.
Picture: Audi Quattro road version.
Picture: This is already a racing version of the engine. The terrifying dual exhaust relief valves are telling you how much the engine is being squeezed.
Picture: Visual inspection shows that this is the owner of the Audi Quattro street version, replicating his car into Quattro racing form.
The birth of Quattro can be said to be inspired by Peigong. It is a road sports car, but Audi’s intention is not to make it a road dominator. Since the advantage of the four-wheel drive system lies in non-paved roads, Audi set the stage for Quattro to play in the most popular motorsport in the 1980s, the WRC World Rally Championship. In the WRC in the 1980s, there was a group called Group B, where there were a bunch of crazy car manufacturers, a bunch of crazy cars, a bunch of crazy drivers, and a group of crazy spectators. Although the car factories that were once popular in WRC , the current situation is not very good... 1981 was the first year that Audi participated in the WRC competition completely. It was the first time that Audi performed on the WRC stage. Michele Mouton drove the Audi Quattro car. Becoming the first female driver to win the WRC annual championship, Quattro racing played an important role in its unconventional speed. Among WRC racing cars, Audi Quattro is the first to introduce a four-wheel drive system. On muddy, rainy and snowy stages, the Quattro always leaves its mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive rivals by a wide margin, and returns to paved roads with its inflexible center differential and poor front-wheel steering. However, it was instantly killed by the opponent, which showed the advantages and disadvantages of the four-wheel drive system in positive and negative ways. In 1982, Audi sent three racing cars to participate in the WRC Group B 3000cc class event and won the annual championship that year. In 1983, 1984 and 1985, it hovered in front of the Manufacturers Cup with runner-up-champion-runner-up. The two of them were in the spotlight for a while. In 1985, Audi participated in the WRC competition with the Quattro S1 E2. The horsepower competition had pushed the power of this car to 500 horses! This forces the team engineers to consider equipping the Quattro? S1? E2 car with an even more exaggerated aerodynamic package than the DTM track car to obtain more downforce. Another highlight is that the team experimentally equipped the car with a "Power-shift" gearbox, which is the predecessor of the now famous DSG dual-clutch gearbox.
Picture: Audi Quattro racing cars from different years gather together.
The peak period of Audi Quattro in WRC came to an end with the cancellation of Group B competition rules. The production volume of models that have always been remembered by the world and respected by car manufacturers is definitely not comparable to mass-produced civilian cars that pursue commercial interests. In the 11 years from 1980 to 1991, the sales volume of the Audi Quattro street version was 11,452 units, with an average annual sales volume of only a mere 1,000 units. But it is the Quattro model that has achieved the most attention from its opponents in the world's most watched competitions. The Quattro model can be said to have made the Audi brand shine in the 1980s. A little-known car manufacturer turned around. When it comes to singing, I begin to have a certain confidence that I can challenge BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The high-performance model development department established by Audi also directly used the company name of quattro. Even the Torsen-style center differential equipped with Quattro was simply named after quattro because the high-performance image of Quattro was deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
The lowercase quattro is not considered a proper noun in English grammar, and it is written the same way as "four" in Italian. However, Audi still follows the principle of "there is quattro only when there is Quattro". A registered trademark was applied for "quattro". The lowercase quattro can be understood as having two meanings. One is Audi's high-performance department quattro GmbH established in 1983, and the other is Audi's four-wheel drive system.
Audi established the high-performance and sports department purely because of Quattro's dazzling performance in WRC. Under the aura of Quattro, Audi decided to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary in 1983 to take on Audi's high-performance products. R&D projects. With the efforts of quattro engineers, Audi has developed an RS car series to compete with BMW M and Mercedes-Benz AMG. RS4 and RS6 have made their respective opponents sit on pins and needles. Another career peak of quattro? GmbH was the production of Audi's performance flagship R8 (not the Le Mans racing R8) in 2006.
Picture: Audi quattro? GmbH specializes in producing speed monsters. The most commendable one is the violent station wagon with a speed of over 300.
The origin of Audi is four car companies working side by side, and Audi's quattro four-wheel drive system interprets the meaning of four interlocking rings fighting side by side as four wheels firmly gripping the ground. 1981 was the first year of the quattro four-wheel drive system. The first generation quattro system was an open center differential and rear axle differential with a locking switch. The front axle differential was completely open. Since 1988, quattro has evolved into the second generation. The main change is to replace the center differential with a Torsen torque-sensing differential, which can sense the difference in rotational speed of the front and rear axles and act as a lock. The rear differential with locking conversion and the full The open front differential remains. The third-generation quattro system is only used in Audi's flagship model V8 (the successor model of V8 is the A8). The automatic transmission model changes the center differential to a planetary gear set with a multi-disc torque divider, while the manual transmission model maintains the Torsen differential. Both models upgrade the rear wheel differential to Torsen and the front wheel differential. Still open. The fourth-generation quattro system is more popular and can be seen on A4/S4/RS4, A6/S6/RS6/Allroad models. The fully mechanical Torsen differential is only placed on the center differential, and the differentials on the front and rear axles are also switched to "electronic differential locks". The principle is to use the ABS wheel speed sensor to find wheels that are slipping and idling, and then Apply braking force to suppress slipping. The fifth-generation quattro has upgraded the torque distribution ratio of the central differential. Up to 80% of the torque can be distributed to the rear axle. If ESP intervenes, 100% of the torque can be transmitted to an axle (for the principle, see Electronic Differential Lock). When quattro evolved to the sixth generation, the Torsen center differential was replaced with a crown gear developed by Audi with multiple discs to distribute torque. The front wheels can get up to 70% of the torque, and the rear wheels can get up to 85% of the torque.
Picture: Audi V8. As its name suggests, the car uses a V8 engine. In 1993, the successor model was called A8 according to Audi's reunification of naming methods.
The above is a brief history of the development of the quattro four-wheel drive system used in longitudinally mounted engines. In fact, several generations of quattro systems using Torsen torque-sensitive differential locks also have Torsen models. The author is I won’t expand on it here. It would be more interesting to write another article about differential locks with different structures. A topic derived from Torsen is that many people think that the core of quattro is the Torsen differential, but this is not the case. For example, the Audi Q7 is also marked with a quattro four-wheel drive system. Its four-wheel drive system is a multi-plate clutch hybrid four-wheel drive system developed by Borg Warner. However, the quattro system of transverse-engined models such as the A2 and A3 is not suitable for use. The straight-line transmission Torsen differential uses a hydraulic viscous friction or Haldex multi-plate clutch system that is more convenient for right-angle transfer. It should be said that as long as it is Audi's four-wheel drive system, it will be represented by quattro, but quattro does not represent a specific structure or technology, but a mark of Audi's four-wheel drive product line. On the other hand, even Volkswagen's longitudinal engine platform four-wheel drive system, although it is called 4Motion, also uses a Torsen differential.
Picture: Such photos are very cute, but the TT using the PQ35 transverse engine platform, whether it is RS or not, uses a four-wheel drive system that is completely different from Quattro in structure.
Looking at the history of Audi, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Quattro saved Audi and that quattro developed Audi. "Four" is a fateful number for Audi. Initially, four companies formed Audi's predecessor Automobile Alliance, and then the four-wheel drive system made the Audi brand famous and became the most famous four-wheel drive system promoter in the world. who. Quattro has gone through a crazy and glorious history, leaving behind two legacies of quattro? GmbH and quattro four-wheel drive system that will be used by future generations for a lifetime.
This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.