It was not until 1980 that some very clear thinking German engineers speculated that a similar arrangement might be a very efficient drive for smaller vehicles, even road going cars.
The idea for a high performance four-wheel drive saloon car was proposed by Audi’s chassis engineer, Jörg Bensinger, in 1977, when he observed that the Volkswagen Iltis Jeep, a 1700cc 75 horsepower engined and exceedingly agile amphibious vehicle, could outperform any other vehicle in snow, no matter how powerful.
It was one of those “what if?” questions that occasionally change the course of history.
Bensinger’s idea was to start developing an Audi 80 variant in cooperation with Walther Treser, Director of Pre-Development. Ur-Quattro (“Ur” being the German prefix denoting “ancestral” or “primordial”) emerged in 1980 to be sold to European customers. It was the first production vehicle to have permanent four-wheel drive and later the first to include a turbo-charged engine.
Between 1980 and 1991 Audi produced 11,452 Quattro vehicles of various sophistication and, largely by winning eight world rally titles (much to the chagrin of Peugeot who had got accustomed to winning them) proved conclusively that the idea was a rather a jolly one.
The rally prepared ultra-light (1090 kg) Sport Quattro S1 is still widely regarded as the most outrageously powerful rally car ever fielded in international competition. The final iterations of factory machines of 1986 were rated at an incredible 441 kW (600 PS; 591 bhp). But Audi had not quite finished with the idea of coupling immensely powerful engines with four-wheel drive.
In 1987 the competition at the annual Pikes Peak rally was much stronger than usual. It was also to be the S1’s swansong. German rally legend Walter Röhrl was given a “mildly modified” Sport Quattro S1. The turboboost was raised to produce a rumored 1000+ bhp. Röhrl won at his very first attempt.
Besinger’s then revolutionary original idea now seems very ordinary. Apart from the obvious off-road SUVs, the four-wheel drive train has trickled into the most unexpected corners of the motor industry from the Bentley Continental range through to the low budget Suzuki 2009 SX4 Crossover. Such an industry standard now, when designing the new Mulsanne, Bentley made a positive decision to include four-wheel drive and preferred to continue the heritage of rear-wheel drive cars in this model.
The four-by-four (4x4) setup has become something of a statement for many drivers. The hint given by the all-round traction and usually boxy large vehicle that is often associated with the configuration is one of the outdoorsman. Urban drivers would be hard pushed to use 4x4 usefully. Get a few meters off many of the roads in Saudi Arabia and into soft sand however and if you do not have a 4x4 you are in trouble.
Getting into sandy (legal) trouble is however a welcome option for many of Jeddah’s young men with 4x4 vehicles, a lot of spare time and the world’s biggest sandpit a few kilometers outside the city limits. Even more fun is getting other people out of it.
Any weekend, 25 km east of Jeddah and within sight of the Makkah expressway, there is a convergence of vehicles and adventure minded drivers making the most of the sand. Over the last decade it has developed into something of a tradition and Jeddah based Adalid PR’s Suhaib Alwazir has been there for most of it.
“Many of us, local and expat, have limited options for adventure — it’s a choice between scuba diving or off-roading,” he said. Off road driving had some very positive benefits and divides into two areas; local challenges and longer-range exploration.
The weekend site near Bahra, Jeddah is an ideal training ground for a first excursion into using a 4x4 vehicle for what it was designed to do; give traction in seemingly impossible conditions. The slopes and tracks offer a variety challenges from the safe nursery slopes where a novice driver learns very quickly which gear to select and to keep the power on all the way to the top to extremely challenging steep dunes that challenge the most experienced driver.
“It’s a great opportunity just to have fun in a safe environment or to use as a training area before tackling bigger challenges,” he said.
Long-range drivers, said Alwazir, often used satellite maps to plan trips. Looking for surface water or strong hints of recent water, they head out cross-country to explore.
“It ‘s a wonderful way of learning something about the country, the environment and how to survive in it,” he said. An essential part of the trip is the logistics and pre-planning.
“The right car, off-road rated equipment such as kinetic straps and lights, sufficient food and water to cope with being stranded, a balloon bag lifting jack and at least two spare wheels are absolutely vital,” he said. Top in the list of priorities for expedition work is numbers. “Going alone is potentially fatal,” he said. “The more in a group, the safer the individual is.”
Sabkah or salty waterlogged sand is a driver’s nightmare. Often covered with a dusting of wind-blown sand, it is very hard to spot before rolling onto it. “It’s instinctive to ease the foot off when you feel the car becoming vague and unresponsive but that is terminal and you sink and stick fast,” he said. Often it needs several vehicles, sand ladders and kinetic tow straps to retrieve a vehicle.
As the range of vehicles able to tackle desert conditions has become more numerous, they have attracted their own bands of followers. The classic Nissan Patrols and Toyota Land Cruisers are still the staple of the sport yet happily double as safe family transport.
New to the scene is the Toyota FJ Cruiser — a town car on weekdays but a formidable piece of kit in desert conditions. Even as a standard vehicle, it has attracted a dedicated band of followers and is rapidly becoming the vehicle of choice for the younger age group of dune-bashers. Add some balloon tires, a front-end kangaroo-bar, a winch and some up-rated shock absorbers and springs and you have a seriously capable desert vehicle, said Alwazir.
Manufacturers take the trials in real desert conditions seriously. Toyota, when introducing the FJ, loaned several to the community in Bahra as an informal assessment panel. Within days, the young men of the area had discovered what the vehicle was capable of and, as Alwazir put it, “where all the buttons were and what they did.” They now are regular visitors to the weekend dunes site offering advice and assistance based on practical experience.
The skills learned by pushing a vehicle to its limits — and indeed the driver to beyond what he might have believed were his — has its positive benefits. The transferable skills include sound knowledge of the vehicle and its real capabilities (what it can do and more importantly what it cannot), mental and mechanical preparation and perhaps most of all, the skill of anticipation.
Charging a dune and driving over the top without knowing what is on the other side can be expensive. Sliding down the other side at an angle across the slope will cause the vehicle to roll. If the dune is the perimeter of a depression filled with talc-fine sand, it may double as the final resting place for your expensive Jeep. There is at least one, kept as something of a reminder to the incautious, at the Bahra site.
Above all, challenging both vehicle and driver is fun, but legal fun with valuable learning content.
Perhaps one day at the setting of the sun and while sitting on a silent dune in a remote part of a Saudi desert, you might spare a thought for Jörg Bensinger, who in a moment of inspiration, moved access to four-wheel drive vehicles away from the military and the purely functional into the public arena.
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