1984 Audi Sport Quattro S1

 

There are lots of fine race driver names in the history of motorsports. Sterling Moss, Alfonso Antonio Vicente Eduardo Angel Blas Francisco de Borja Cabeza de Vaca y Leighton (a.k.a. Marquis de Portago), and the ever popular Dick Trickle come to mind. We'd need to put in a strong vote, however, for Swede rally sensation Stig Blomqvist, winner of the 1984 World Rally Championship drivers' title. He drove for the Audi Sport factory team between 1982 and 1985, his Group B championship-winning season starting in a long-wheelbase Audi Quattro A2 and finishing in a short-wheelbase Sport Quattro S1.

Lucky for us, we recently had the chance to belt in beside The Stig as he powered over a west central Swedish parcours buried in deep snow. Better still, we were able to ride shotgun with the legendary shoe piloting what was essentially the same Sport Quattro S1 he drove for the last part of the '84 WRC season. 
In civilian trim, the Sport Quattro S1 was powered by a turbocharged 2.1-liter aluminum block inline five-cylinder good for 302 horsepower. (We had the chance to drive a red example for a few laps of a separate snowy circuit and could only come away wildly impressed at how capable it still is).

In the race trim as driven by Blomqvist, the Sport Quattro S1 was stuffed with anywhere from 444 hp to north of 500 hp. As The Stig testified to us over the course of the drive, torque was "around 500 Newton meters," or about 369 pound-feet, which is pretty heady stuff in a car that typically weighed 2,400 pounds dry and had a noticeably brief wheelbase of just 86.8 inches. See what we mean by watching the in-car video below (Blomqvist doesn't really get cooking until about two minutes in). 
Exploding, lunging and smoothly landing after leaps as though on the moon in this rally-spec S1 is remarkable stuff. With its ultra short wheelbase, the sensation is that of spinning on a fulcrum point directly under one's tush. The tires for our demonstration drive were not of the invincible spiked variety, but milder Monte Carlo Rally-regulation studded treads – Michelin 16/61-15X M+S. Maybe it was this fact that seemed to keep The Ur-Stig from really busting loose like we've seen him do before in the car. After all, these racing S1s can get to 60 mph from a stop in three seconds flat – they're explosively quick.

We couldn't resist asking him which car he enjoyed more, the Quattro A2 with its 12.6-inch longer wheelbase or the truncated Sport Quattro S1. With almost no hesitation, Blomqvist affirmed that he much preferred the A2's driving characteristics to those of this stubby S1.

Could have fooled us from the way he was driving it. 


mage Credit: Copyright 2012 Daniel Wollstein / AOL 


 

Financial police targeting European supercar owners due to Euro crisis?

Italy is dealing with a financial crisis that placed it just behind Greece on the list of dangers to the stability of the euro, and with €1.9 trillion in public debt the country hasn't hesitated to turn over its couch pillows searching for every contribution. It started a couple of years ago with the Guardia di Finanza targeting superyacht owners, and it has continued with the financial police going after supercar owners.

In December 2011, the police noted the license plates of roughly 150 Lamborghinis, Ferraris and other high-dollar cars at the Cortina d'Ampezzo ski resort and gave the registration info to the tax office. The tax office checked on the declared incomes, and in nearly 60 cases found owners that claimed to be making less than €40,000 per year – this in a country where the base price of a BMW M3 is €70,700. In an especially bad case, one business owner owned a Mercedes-Benz but had no tax records and a wife on public assistance.

The focus on owners of expensive cars has since spread to other hotspots for the rich like Rome, Milan, Portofino and Florence, and owners have responded by selling their cars at massive discounts. There have been reports of owners so worried about getting stopped by the police that they won't even drive them to the dealer to be traded in, but want the dealer to come pick them up. Entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe and South America are taking advantage of the clearance sales.

Tax cheats are estimated to cost Italy €120 billion per year, and the new efforts along with huge new taxes are expected to reap more than €160 billion annually.

News Source: Telegraph, Bloomberg

Image Credit: Valery Hache/AFP/Getty

Volvo and Polestar release new S60 TTA touring cars

Volvo and Polestar release new S60 TTA touring cars - Volvo may not be the first name you'd think of in racing, but it stands as a dominant force in European touring cars. Before stepping up to the World Touring Car Championship last year, Volvo and its partner Polestar Racing had come to dominate the Swedish Touring Car Championship. While that series has since expanded to all of Scandinavia, Volvo made other plans in switching over to the TTA Racing Elite League. And this is the car with which it will be contesting the new series.

Rather than field the same C30 touring car which Volvo and Polestar had fielded in the STCC and WTCC, the TTA racer revealed here is based (or at least looks like) the S60 sedan. Under that carbon fiber body sits a 420-horsepower V6 driving the rear wheels through a six-speed sequential gearbox and boosted by a similar KERS regenerative braking system as employed in Formula One.

The livery has yet to be finalized, so for now Polestar has decked the S60 TTA out in the same shade of baby blue that makes its other touring cars, that 450-horsepower all-wheel-drive C30 prototype and for that matter the Alonso-era Renault F1 cars so perplexingly devious. Click the image above to view in high resolution and follow the jump for the full press release.

News Source: TTA