Events Coverage
Audi's 25-Year Reunion: quattro Meeting in Ingolstadt
By words: Milko Konttinen, photos: author
Aug 8, 2005, 22:44

The famous five-cylinder turbo growl was the sound of the weekend in and around Ingolstadt when hundreds of quattro Audis gathered for the biggest quattro meeting in the world. Supposedly as many as 450 cars arrived from Germany and neighboring countries to be admired by Audi fanatics. The most represented model in the meeting was naturally the original ur-quattro, but the best eye candy, however, definitely were the dozens of uber limited Sport quattros. By the number of examples at the meeting, you could’ve thought it’s not so rare after all!



After a Saturday drive around the Bavarian countryside with stops in pictoresque little towns, the cars were boarded on river ships in Riedenburg to be shipped back to Ingolstadt. And the Audi hometown was where the meeting culminated. Literally dozens of private owners’ Sport quattros were parked in the Audi Forum’s Piazza, together with factory and privately owned quattro racing cars from the 80’s and 90’s. On display were different evolutions of Audi’s Group B rally weapons, IMSA racers, as well as DTM and STW Audi sedans. The Piazza was packed with legendary modern classics and plenty of wide-eyed Audi enthusiasts.



The weekend’s climax, however, was a series of exhibition laps around a small track created on one of the Ingolstadt factory’s parking lots. Ex- and current factory drivers Walter Röhrl, Stig Blomqvist, Frank Biela and Marco Werner drove the quattro monsters around the track in front of a hundreds, if not thousands, of cheering fans. The atmosphere within the crowd rose to new levels when Audi’s rally legends Blomqvist and Röhrl got back to the feel of the long-wheelbase Group B quattro and the Pikes Peak Sport quattro. The turbo monsters were driven with one wheel up in corners sliding, wastegates whistling and exhausts spitting fire. And the crowd cheered on when Blomqvist ended his laps with a few smoking donuts. Especially Mr. Röhrl seemed to enjoy great popularity with German racing fans, which was easily noticed when the fences were opened and the crowd was surged forward to meet the drivers for autographs.



Audi did a great job with this event, offering a good time for both classic owners and non-Audi owning enthusiasts as well.



Editorial Note: Milko Konttinen (a.k.a. “Son of a B...5er!” on the discussion forums) is lucky enough to live close to Ingolstadt. We at Fourtitude would like to extend our sincerest thanks for Milko’s generous offer to cover the event for this publication, resulting in an informative report and hundreds of high-quality photos. In addition, we’ve included several photos from Christian Steinert at www.GermanCarBlog.com, who was also generous enough to share some of his photography. Thanks to both.

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