Wow Audi held the global patent for the ugly stick in the 80's -
Audi Quattro vs. Lancia Delta S4
Now - Firstly I was never a fan of the Audi - 5 cylinders/ 10 cylinders - WAY too metric for me and they sound like an engine that is about to die and is crying its soul out through the outlet manifold. (I've tried to research why a bank of 5 cylinders sound as rough as a (Essex Girl/Florida Girl/insert your own horror show here)
4 cylinders in a bank - Nice, Bang them together in a V8 or a Flat 8 maybe you get creative and have a triple bank W12 or you could go full banana and have a H16 with 4 banks of Four cylinders and two cranks shafts all geared together - what could go wrong?
Or you can have a bank of six: Straight 6 just like a pucker Jag - or gear two banks together for a V12 - Great.
And why not have a Straight 8 - that would be a "Dusy" or you can get get full English and have a V16 with two banks of 8 cylinders - maybe put in a supercharger... BRM managed to get 612bhp from a 1.5litre V16 way way back in the 50's - occasionally, when it would work, from time to time...
Okat I got a bit off track - anyhow a Straight 5 or a V10 will always sound wrong - Like Shoji Tabuchi singing a Cowboy Song. (Wow that is obscure even for me!)
Also the Audi looks like a Forklift truck... I am sure it has a few nice bits (Door handles, maybe the door mirror) but the blocky slabby lack of finese makes me cringe. And can you ever excuse Audi for the KKK logo?
Not a Ku Klux Klan Logo, yesterday.
So I don't like the Engine or the way the Audi looks... anything else?
Yup the placement of that straight five engine is way way out the front... All that weight makes for so much natural understeer I am amazed the front wheels do anything. BUT it does have a short wheelbase (Front and rear axels are close to each other, just like a fork lift truck.) so could rotate quicker.
The Lancia - now The Delta is nice, but I was a fan of the previous car the "037" - a meat and tayto's mid engined/rear wheel drive car, none of this four wheel drive, girly stuff - The Delta is a step down but it is way, way better than the Audi before I turn a wheel.
Engine - It's going to be solid Italian steel and will it be lumbering over the front axel? Nope, slapped in the back, gifting the car oversteer and swift corner rotation I hope. It will be much harder to control (Much more fun to drive) - but ... Yes the slap of reality now, the 80's era Rally cars were super fast and very fragile - Normal public roads with maybe a few straw bales or a bit of hazard tape is all well and good when you are sighting a blind corner at 90 mph, but if you make a mistake then you are going straight to the accident - maybe you will get lucky and hit a farm gate and plough through a turnip field, maybe you tumble off a cliff or slam into a 50 year old tree.
I've only run the Audi so far - and after my previous tirade it does get worse as the engine sounds like pig-vomit, even without the misfiring.
I've got to run the Lancia - but it has to win, doesn't it?
Did some more flying.
Light nimble just the job. But it wasn't all sweet sailing. the gearbox only has 5 gears, which despite the supercharger can leave you in a high gear and a low speed and unable to put down any of the Lancia's mighty 1759cc engine - the Audi has 383cc more which is like half a pint!
I also had a little look in the set up area (Mostly as I had to buy chunky tread off road tyres for them - 5,000 kazula - what a bargain! The Audi has an extra gear which can help if the engine has a narrow power band. The thing that did surprise me was the 50:50 weight distribution on the Audi and the torque split which boggled my tiny mind when I saw the Audi sent 65% of its power to the rear wheels, and the Lancia only sent 60%.
But the big two factors in these two are the weight of the Lancia - it is 200kg - 440lbs, and where that weight is, the Lancia has a 43:57 weight distribution making the back end interesting when it does break traction... For me This is a winner, counter steering opposite lock balancing the car in a cloud of smoke... and get the cherry on the top? The Lancia has a proper Italian style chirpy Beep-Beep horn.
The Audi is a capable car, safe, ponderous, awkward to pilot. The Lancia was light demanding you to dance through the apexes thinking two corners ahead as you slice through apexes like Pizza Cutter (???)
I did note down my best laps on a test track - the Lancia was a cool 3 seconds faster - probably down with my affinity to touchy oversteering cars. But to be honest if the Audi was 3 seconds faster - I'd still pick the Delta...
Diamond Medallion status does have a few perks...