Pic Of The Week: Audi And Michele Mouton

Rallying's First Lady has been promoting the new RS3. We prefer to think of her doing this...

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'Still the best'. This was Michele Mouton's pronouncement at the end of a deeply cringeworthy promotional video for the Audi RS3 that we were shown earlier this week in the pre-test drive press conference at the car's launch in Monaco.

The idea, presumably, was to emphasise the link between Audi's glorious rallying past and its latest RS model - using the legendary rallyiste, holding the launch in a famous rallying town, etc. But the effect was to highlight just how far Audi has moved from those original early 1980s rallying heydays.

For while Mme Mouton - who was runner-up in the 1982 World Rally Championship, let's not forget - made her name furiously pedalling an Audi Quattro around the world's special stages, the car itself was changing the face of rallying forever.

Thirty years on, the RS3 is a far more sober, less game-changing proposition, and Mouton is older, more corporate - she was even wearing a suit in the video we saw. Oh, and the Monte Carlo rally is no longer a WRC event.

Still the best? Michele, you will always be a legend, but steer clear of the corporate videos, please - we prefer to think of you doing this (on the way to fourth place in the 1982 San Remo rally).

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thewheelman

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2,194 posts

174 months

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Friday 11th March 2011

Mouton & the Audi Quattro, two legends & great memories of my childhood watching motorsport on tv, got me well on the way to the car junkie i am today. Great picture, i have some nice pics of the Group B Audi speeding up Pikes Peak.