It's red, it's four-wheel drive and it takes no lip from lowlife scum. As the opening scenes roll on Ashes to Ashes, the BBC series, an Audi quattro sharks through the mean streets. It's as much a hero as Gene Hunt, the scowling copper with a taste for short skirts and dodgy police procedure. Yet while television stardom may be flattering, the real story behind the quattro you see here is a thousand times more intriguing and dramatic than that of its small-screen sibling.
Between 1982 and 1986, the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, the governing body for many motor sports) sanctioned rallying's Group B, a category that spawned the most powerful and dynamic rally cars ever seen in the World Rally Championship (WRC). This class allowed manufacturers to showcase their engineering prowess and it was enthusiastically embraced by Audi, Peugeot, Lancia and Ford, among others. One of the most extreme machines created for Group B was the Audi Sport quattro S1. With a shortened wheelbase and super-lightweight body made out of Kevlar panels, a monstrously powerful turbocharged five-cylinder engine and a four-wheel-drive powertrain, this car was a rally-winner straight out of the box.
Group B was doomed, however. The cars' extreme performance and paucity of safety features led to fatalities, not just among drivers and co-drivers but among spectators as well. The turning point was the death of Henri Toivonen and his co-driver, Sergio Cresto, in the 1986 Corsica rally, when their Lancia Delta S4 left the road and erupted into a huge fireball. Group B was banned later that year.
In the intervening decades, the aura of legend surrounding the cars has grown. Are these monsters really untamable? We thought a professional race driver would be the best person to ask. Allan McNish, twice winner of the Le Mans 24 Hours race, has enjoyed a successful career behind the wheel of just about every conceivable machine right up to F1 cars. He has never, though, driven anything like the Audi Sport quattro S1, he says.
The car we have asked McNish to take for a spin at Silverstone has been loaned to us by its owner, Steve Perez. Perez paid £97,000 for the car in 2004 but it has had extensive work since then to return it to "as original" condition, bar a few sensible modifications. The original's aluminium roll cage, for example, has been replaced with a much more robust steel arrangement.
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The turbo-charged 2.3-litre straight-five-cylinder engine (increased from its original displacement of 2.1 litres) generates a staggering 554bhp at 7500rpm, and its short-geared five-speed manual gearbox allows mind-bending acceleration up to its maximum of 115mph. That may not sound much, but rally cars are designed for getting up to speed between bend after bend as quickly as possible.
McNish may be new to the experience of the quattro S1, but he's no stranger to the world of rallying. "I grew up in the southwest of Scotland," he says. "The RAC [rally] used to come to a service park that was about half a mile from where I was born. When I was about nine or ten, in the late 1970s, I'd go down there through the back of the woods and have a wee poke around. So I've been exposed to that era of car."
Before I jump into his co-driver's seat, McNish does a few familiarisation laps. And like any true racing driver, he is fast as soon as he is out of the gate - the Audi sits down on its haunches as he powers it through the hairpin at the end of the pit straight. At every gearchange the car's nose bobs comically skyward, and long trails of flame shoot from the exhaust. And then I realise, as McNish throws the car into the hairpin sideways and stands on the throttle to wind the engine's turbo back up to maximum pressure, that he is using absolutely all of the car's performance. It's plain to the observer that the Audi's minders haven't put any restrictions on engine revs - it goes to 8700rpm - or speed. And McNish is loving it.
When he swings back into the pits, amid the sheen of sweat covering his face is a massive grin. So what was it like? "As soon as the turbo kicks in, you've got this massive noise and the car absolutely blasts forward. I mean, I expected it to have strong acceleration because of the gearing, but I really didn't expect it to have that acceleration. I thought it was going to be more progressive, but it was zero and then absolutely everything."
Minutes later I'm strapped in and McNish gives a thumbs-up as he gently slots in first gear and trundles the car down the pit lane. Then second, third and fourth gear come and go in the blink of an eye. The savageness of thrust has my head bouncing off the back of the seat with every gearchange and it takes a couple of laps to adjust to the massive braking power, brutal acceleration and stomach-churning sideways slides. The cabin heat is like a Turkish bath.
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Watching McNish at work is a treat. His feet dance across the pedals in a blur, and through the corners he's sawing madly at the wheel to get the car oversteering. Once or twice he loses turbo boost in a corner and the car briefly bogs down. "There's a very fine line with the understeer, between getting the car into a nice slide coming into the corner or going too far and losing the turbo boost. But you can get on the power when you're in the range and slide out of the corner in a true, old-fashioned four-wheel drift, which in a modern car is much, much more difficult."
So, not such a monster after all? Well, not for our professional racer after a few hot laps around the safe confines of a coned track. But having emerged drenched in sweat and weak at the knees after my brief experience, I've got a new respect for the supermen who did it back in the day, knowing full well that, unlike with today's race and rally cars, there was a high possibility of not walking away from an accident. I try to imagine what it would have been like to hustle this ballistic quattro for hours over an African rally stage, but I can't.
If you don't believe me, head to the rally stage at Goodwood, where a selection of these historic monsters will be put through their paces around the mud tracks of the forest. They may be banned from motor sports, but their legend looks destined to live on for some time to come.
Watch your favourite rally heroes in action on the Forest Rally Stage at the Festival of Speed. Along with Hannu Mikkola, who took victory in the Audi quattro S1, you can see other great drivers such as the current world champion Sébastien Loeb and the former champs Walter Röhrl, Bjorn Waldegard and Stig Blomqvist. As part of Audi's centenary, McNish will be driving R8 and R15 Le Mans race cars.