Travelling without moving: Audi Sport Quattro SWB

Still time to buy famed Group B special before our EuroMillions ticket comes up trumps...

By PH Staff / Monday, 1 December 2025 / Loading comments

You wait for buses, two come at once. The Sport Quattro is a rare old bird by any measure; fewer than 200 ever found customers, and many fewer than that are in the UK. We hadn’t seen one in yonks before a terrific red-coloured example turned up in the summer. The vendor wanted £625k for it, and on the basis of it no longer being for sale, presumably found someone prepared to pay it.

This one, in Alpine White, might be even better. Or at the very least, it is another homologated bus to gawp at in wonder. The asking price is much the same, and that’s appropriate because it has done virtually the same miles and appears to be in equally admirable condition. Probably that has something to do with the very small amount of miles that have been racked up since it was acquired in 2011.

We can attribute its modest amount of use to pride of place in Jay Kay’s sprawling car collection. The MOT record suggests that the Sport Quattro has not been out and about much in the last few years, although it was returned to road legal status last month and the dealer charged with selling it assures us that it has been regularly maintained in the meantime.

Needless to say, it looks the business. The world is not short of cars that would look better with some extraneous length removed from the wheelbase, but few surely would benefit quite like the Quattro did. Its maker, of course, was seeking performance gains on world rally stages - yet the stylistic effect, grafted onto a more bluff front end, was equally transformational for the road version. No wonder it is considered a touchstone of Audi design even 40 years later.

Weight reduction was obsessive, with Kevlar used for the wings, roof and front apron – all of which remain intact on this example. Under the bonnet, you get the legendary 2,133cc five-cylinder turbocharged engine, complete with its advanced 20-valve DOHC head and the 306hp it needed for a sub-5-second 0-62mph time. Sufficient for it to still qualify as fast today; rocket-like for 1985, when it was delivered to its first owner in Switzerland.

There it remained until the late ‘90s, when it was apparently acquired by a former Audi rally co-driver. Which is who Jay Kay acquired it from. As previous ownership histories go, it’s a notable one - but really it’s about the pugnacious brilliance of the SWB and its almost peerless rally kudos. Is there much chance of the mileage increasing post-sale? Who knows, although the car’s value as an investment is hard to deny. Let’s just hope the next owner has a little more imagination than that...

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