Man Maths: Audi RS2 Avant

I so admire those responsible for not simply choosing the easy way out and cancelling all car events altogether, and then for making the most of the opportunity the circumstances provided. Like creating a timed rally stage using the track, paddock, access roads and even the tunnel beneath the circuit, during the day and at night, which could never have happened with tens of thousands of spectators in attendance.

There was a drifting course as well, plus the always spectacular historic motor races we’ve come to expect from Goodwood. But I most enjoyed the timed shootout – a single lap, lots of great cars, and some spellbinding driving. Young Harry King’s run in a Porsche Carrera Cup car left nothing on the table, his 911 right on the limit of what it could do the entire lap. But it was Nick Padmore in the beautiful Arrows A11 F1 car who stole the show, and the fastest time of the shootout.

SpeedWeek was live streamed globally in more than 150 countries. It showed what could be done with a little persistence, a touch of creativity and some lateral thinking. I was at Goodwood with Audi the day before the event began to celebrate 40 years of quattro. Mostly I just remember being elated to be out messing around with cars again, following months of lockdown, uncertainty, worry and very little by way of car fun.

My car for the day was an Audi RS2 Avant. With a couple of dozen in our group we drove in convoy up and down the hillclimb course at Goodwood House (really it’s just the Duke of Richmond’s driveway) before doing a lap or two of the track itself, again one behind the other. These were not tyre-screeching, breakneck laps like Harry King’s, but we got to exercise the cars a little bit.

For whatever reason, I got lucky. We had a star guest in our midst, none other than 1984 World Rally Champion Stig Blomqvist. He was at the wheel of Audi UK’s Sport Quattro S1 Group B rally car, much like the one he campaigned as reigning champion for part of the 1985 season. And who slotted in right behind him in the convoy? Little old me in the RS2.

Stig’s rally car didn’t really look like a car from where I was sitting. Its enormous rear wing gave the back end a boxy look, more like a flatbed carrying some enormous cargo. And whenever the opportunity presented itself, Blomqvist would leave a gap to the car ahead, wait a second or two, then squirt through first and second gears to feel the S1 surge forwards like only a four-wheel drive Group B car can. Even in his mid-70s, Stig couldn’t help himself.

I loved it, and the sound too, never more so than when he did exactly the same thing on the fast, flowing Goodwood circuit, now letting the car run through third and fourth as well. I did whatever I could to keep up. If I stayed close enough, spots of Stig’s unburnt race fuel would appear on my windscreen any time he flattened the accelerator pedal. I may not have been baptised as a boy, but I was anointed by a World Champion that day.

And the RS2? I remember it feeling really very quick in a straight line, once the turbo had spooled up midway through the rev range. Until then it was pretty unresponsive, which is typical of the era. What I enjoyed about it most, though, was that it needed to be driven. It wasn’t like a modern performance car, with outrageous power, a paddleshift transmission, vast grip, rock solid body control and all the rest of it. To make that thing clip along at a decent rate, your own work rate at the wheel, with the gearlever and on the pedals had to be right up there.

I was having a wonderful time, right up until the RS2 did something that reminded me not all progress since the mid-1990s has been in the wrong direction. On one of the many brilliant B-roads that surround Goodwood House, I turned into a medium-pace left-hander at what seemed like a sensible speed, only for the weight of the car to disagree as it kicked us into a little off-throttle corner-entry slide. More of a wobble, really. The suspension couldn’t contain the forces and the tyres didn’t have the grip to stop them from getting away.

It was a timely reminder that even 25-year-old cars, as the RS2 was back then, don’t have anything like the purchase or stability of modern ones.

Fascinating car, the RS2. It was Audi’s first RS of any sort and developed in conjunction with Porsche. And the car won’t let you forget it – there are ‘PORSCHE’ logos everywhere. I stopped counting at eight. RS2s were assembled by Porsche at Zuffenhausen at a time when the company could only really keep its head above water, financially speaking, by building special cars for other companies.

Porsche tuned Audi’s five-cylinder turbo engine until it produced 311bhp and 302lb ft. With four-wheel drive, the RS2 was faster to 30mph from standstill than the McLaren F1 (but slower everywhere else, obviously). It was one of the first really heavily uprated performance estate cars, essentially setting the template for the generations of fast Audis that the company has, in large part, built its brand upon.

Of the 2891 cars that Porsche built, just 180 right-hand drive examples came to the UK. So it’s an exceedingly rare car over here, which explains why you’ll see so few for sale today. As in, count them on one hand and don’t worry about the thumb. The few I found spanned £50,000-80,000, depending on mileage.

Would I, if I had the money? Probably not, but I do love the history of the RS2, its significance both for Audi and Porsche, and I would be very happy to be reminded of my day with Stig Blomqvist any time I wheeled it out of the garage.

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