All-Wheel Drive Stars

14 January 2025

All-wheel drive has become ubiquitous to the point where many modern cars are offered with it as standard, or available with certain models. The profusion of SUVs has seen to it that four-wheel drive is now nothing out of the ordinary, yet not so very long ago it really was extraordinary what sending drive to all four corners of a car could do.

While the likes of Jeep, Land Rover, Toyota, and Mitsubishi had been showing how all-wheel drive could drag a car through quagmires for decades, it took Audi to show its full potential for road cars. Yes, Jensen had offered its FF in the 1960s and Subaru kept the flame alive in the 1970s, but it was the Germans who made that essential breakthrough with the QR Quattro coupe in 1980.

The Quattro came about when Audi engineers noticed how easily one of its support trucks dealt with wintry conditions while out testing in the 1970s. Applying this logic to road cars was as obvious as it was radical, but the result was no less spectacular. In an instant, Audi made every other performance car look like Bambi on ice if the road was anything less than perfectly dry and warm. Let’s face, in northern Europe, that’s not much of the time and Audi found a willing queue of buyers for its new take on the sports car.

Added character for the Quattro came from its 200bhp five-cylinder 2.1-litre engine, though hanging it right over the front axle didn’t always do the handling balance any favours. Not that this worried Audi as it was soon winning rallies, hearts and minds, and sales. Later on, Audi used the same formula to create the definitive high performance estate car with first the RS2 and then the original RS4. Both made supercars look a bit humdrum, especially in the wet, and showed all-wheel drive was here to stay.

Prior to the RS2, the only company to really challenge Audi’s hold on the all-wheel drive road car crown was Nissan. The Japanese firm was about as far from Audi as you could get in buyers’ minds, building cheap and cheerful small cars and the occasional sports model for light relief. Then Nissan revived the Skyline name with the R32 model in 1989. Suddenly, all hell broke loose in the fast car world as any conception of what a Nissan or almost affordable coupe was capable of.

The R32 claimed to come with 276bhp, which was a sop to the Japanese government trying to limit power outputs from its domestic car makers. Most understood the R32 had a good bit more when the car posted 0-60mph times that left Ferrari and Porsche trailing behind. Immense traction off the line from the Skyline’s all-wheel drive helped here and it carried on its good work when the road began to turn and twist. There were levels of grip that seemed to defy physics and, with this, the Skyline legend was cemented. It was even banned from racing because it just won everything with ease.

Ford should have been on terms with Audi and Nissan as it had launched its Sierra XR4x4 in the mid-1980s, while the Cosworth 4x4 of 1990 was a deft move. However, it was when Ford grafted an Escort body on to the Sierra Cosworth 4x4 chassis that things came good. The Escort Cosworth was not quite the rally car success Ford wanted, but as a road car it was the perfect halo machine. It looked like it wanted a fight and it had the moves to win one. In fact, the Escort was so aggressive that Ford revised it with a smaller turbocharger in 1994 to make it easier to live with.

While Ford pondered how to make the most of all-wheel drive, in Italy that question had long been answered by Lancia with its Delta Integrale. Lancia had been quick to reinvent its rally car programme after the demise of the Group B era in 1986. The new road car-based formula was ideally suited to the Delta Integrale with its compact size, 185bhp 2.0-litre turbo engine, and all-wheel drive. Anyone who tried this car knew it had the measure of the Audi Quattro on the road and rally stage. When the later Evo versions arrived, Lancia had simply upped its game and challenged others to beat it.

For a while, it looked like Lancia was unstoppable, but there was another threat on the way from Japan, and not from Nissan. This is where Subaru took the rapid flat-four engine from its good but heavy Legacy rally car and fitted it to the new compact Impreza. It might not have been pretty or dressed in a European-styled coupe body, but this chin-jutting four-door saloon had attitude in abundance. It also had performance and grip in equal abundance and wasn’t afraid to show them off at any opportunity.

When Subaru put Colin McRae behind the wheel, it brought huge success in the forests and showrooms. For many years, Subaru was all about the Impreza Turbo, WRX, and STI models, and for many fans it still is. But Mitsubishi had designs on this level of enthusiasm and introduced its Lancer Evolution in 1992 with the same intention to win rallies as Subaru. It did and the Lancer Evo gained a following, albeit more slowly than the Impreza. That changed when the Evo VI arrived with its perfect blend of all-in abilities and style, helped in no small measure by Tommi Makinen’s success in the World Rally Championship.

By the late 1990s, all of these cars were revered as landmark machines. Each had taken all-wheel drive and used it to stunning effect, influencing a whole generation of car fans and automotive engineers who went on to build so many more cars with four-wheel drive that bring us to where we are now.