Gone, and Forgotten as Well

“Bad weather” was really “good weather” for the Audi Coupe Quattro

by Rob Sass

How the mighty have fallen. In 25 years, most expensive cars depreciate, but few cars as significant as the original Audi Coupe Quattro (Ur-Quattro from the German for “original”) have so utterly disappeared both in value and visibility from the marketplace.

Although Audi was not the first to offer an all-wheel-drive sport coupe—Jensen briefly offered the FF in the late ’60s and early ’70s—Audi brought the concept to the mainstream with the Quattro. They promoted it by dominating the world rally scene and successfully integrated all-wheel-drive into their main product line.

Lamborghini Countaches and Ferrari 308s may have dominated the dorm room posters of the early 1980s, but if you spent any of your formative years either following big-time rallying or living in places like Boulder or Aspen, Colorado, the Coupe Quattro was the car you wanted.

As SCM’s Thor Thorson noted in his July 2002 profile of the Audi Quattro Coupe, “At the 1980...