Clarkson z'n Favoriete Rally Battle: 1983 Audi Quattro VS. Lancia 037 | Amazon Prime Video NL

[Applause] right now over the years there have been many titanic battles in the world of motorsport many great duels you've had hunt versus louder you've had prost versus sandy you've had the ford gt40 versus the ferraris at le mans but my favorite battle of them all is this one back in 1977 audi was developing this four-wheel drive vehicle for the german military and they had a bit of a thought they wondered if its four-wheel drive system could be made to work in an ordinary family car and so under the cover of darkness at a quarry in a remote corner of germany they began secret tests and straight away it was obvious that with all four wheels being driven the family car had an enormous amount of grip this meant it could go round corners on loose surfaces like that much faster and that they reckoned would make it good at rallying [Music] but there was a problem what i've got here is the 1979 motor racing rule book it's the most boring book in the world but whatever here on page 8 million article 2 says that in rallying four-wheel drive cars will not be admitted [Music] audi however had thought about that and dispatched a man to paris to a meeting of the sports governing body to try and get the rule changed he was very clever because he waited for the meeting to be finished everyone pulling on their hats and coats and then he went oh god sorry one more thing um this rule about um four-wheel drive being banned in rallying is it okay if we uh we get rid of that and everyone said obviously he wants to enter his silly little army lorry and something or other so they all went yes yes whatever and went home three years later this is what happened [Music] the four-wheel drive quattro is all conquering and the audi has been proved master of all conditions superior power and traction with a turbocharged four-wheel drive audi is too much bjorn valdegard has wasted no time improving the dominance of the four-wheel drive quattro hanumikola has scored a tremendous victory so quattros hold all the aces first second and third audi won the world championship in 1982 with this very car actually and from that moment on everyone knew that to win in rallying you had to have four-wheel drive well when i say everyone [Music] this was lancia's answer to the quattro the two-wheel drive 0-37 [Music] i've got a bit of a soft spot for all old lancias but in this it's not soft this is everything i was expecting it to be pops bangs lumpy petrol a dashboard dominated by this enormous and very well used ashtray completely italian honestly it is dainty as a dandelion seed caught in a summer breeze and as agile as a water boatman i mean that was ah that was just glorious through there [Music] glorious it feels highly strong feels like a thoroughbred it's fast as well oh wow what a thing this is on a droid track then or in a beauty contest the o37 would thrash the quattro any day of the week but in the rough and tumble crash bang wallop world of rallying not a chance what's more audi was backed by the industrial monitor volkswagen it was efficient and organized this was the team boss roland gumpert look at him a hands-on bearded german doctor of engineering lancia's team boss meanwhile well he was a bit different [Music] his name was chazardi fiorio and he liked girls and powerboat racing also he was running a team staffed by italians on a shoestring and then there were the drivers audi had hanumikala and stig blancfest and michelle newton who had won 21 rallies between them quattro was the car when everybody sleeps you know in rally business and of course we were developing the car all the time it was getting better and better they were well-funded you know and that time it was a big theme lancia meanwhile had marco alan and walter rawl who was brilliant but said he didn't want to compete in every event and didn't want to be world champion i told him listen i want to win monte carlo i like quasi-car i like acropoli i like new zealand i like san remo i only do this five or six beautiful release and nothing more i am not interested to win any more the world championship title i want to be a normal man not something special and and if if we are always in in the in the newspaper and everywhere of course you never you're never alone because people standing in front of a house and and i don't like her so audi had four-wheel drive a proven car a team staffed by germans a hands-on boss and a squad of world-class drivers who are motivated and on it nancy meanwhile had a budget of three pound 75 two-wheel drive a powerboating playboy at the helm and a part-time driver who didn't want to be world champion however launcia did have one ace up its sleeve they'd been in rallying for ages they'd won the championship four times with cars like the fulvia and then the stratos so although their powerboating team boss looked like a playboy he knew all the tricks for example the rules said that before you could enter a car in a rally you had to build at least 400 examples which could be sold as road cars to customers now obviously when officials from the sports governing body turn up to check you've done that they are going to notice if you've only made 200. so you say yes um but you see this car park was full so the other 200 are in a car park on the other side of town and then you say let's go and count those now and on the way why don't we stop off for a spot of lunch you then make sure the lunch goes on for a very long time you have a starter a main course so turn it into candles for three days got it to pour pudding cheese well when i say reverse careered backwards mints more cheese shame to waste the bottle and then afterwards you take them to another car park which contains miraculously the other 200 cars then you had the cars themselves the rules say they must be fitted with roll cages but roll cages are heavy they'll slow you down so why not use something like this instead it looks like a roll cage it would pass a visual inspection every day of the week but actually it's made from cardboard look i'm not saying lancia actually did that but if you examine these crashed o37s you can see they weren't exactly strong my family and my friends around me said listen why you signed for lunches this sky is so dangerous if you see these thin tubes and these plastic things if you if you went off then it's maybe the last accident you have and i answered listen i am not planning to have an accident however despite lancia's experience and josiah's no one expected them to do well in the first round of the 1983 championship which was held in the freezing mountains above monte carlo we were very much afraid about this rally because you can find a lot of snow ice slippery conditions where of course a mid-engine car with real wheel traction is not the best idea so whilst audi prepared for the event by fettling its cars lancia got ready by going to the supermarket [Music] here they bought all the salt they could lay their hands on they then sprinkled this on the difficult corners so that by the time their car came along the ice was gone [Music] and they weren't finished there we have been also pushing local authorities taking care of the french roads say oh there's a lot of ice on that road it's very dangerous for spectators and for the drivers with all this ice oh oh yes and so they went and they and they cleaned up the the route that was fantastic they also had another trick up their sleeve after the icy stages were over the lancia stopped in the middle of the stage so the winter tires could be changed now there was nothing in the rules that said you could do this but critically there was nothing that said you couldn't if you want to compete in motorsport you must know the rules you have to face the grey zones of the rules and it's always a big fight but you must try to be a bit clever the result in monte carlo then was the exact opposite of what everyone had been expecting four-wheel drive and 340 turbocharged horsepower are just not enough it's audi sadness lancia joy the two-wheel drive lancia is on a rally famed for its slippery conditions finished first and second for the next event of the year in sweden there wasn't enough salt in the world to get rid of all the snow and ice so lancia solved the problem simply not turning up at all audi therefore scored a one-two here and three weeks later they did the same thing again in portugal and after more successes in east africa it looked like audi were running away with it but then the whole circus moved to corsica where almost all of the stages are held on dry smooth tarmac everyone expected the nimble two-wheel drive lancias to pick up a load of points here but nobody could have predicted how many they were gonna pick up usually lancia turned up at an event with two or three cars but here they arrived with four which meant that if they ran faultlessly which they did the best audi could hope for was fifth and thanks to mechanical failures they didn't even get that with our speed it's just like holiday so lancia with its salt and its tire changing antics and its flexible approach to how many cars were in the team was back on top of the leaderboard but then the whole circus moved to the roughest and toughest event on the european calendar greece here everyone knew the rough roads would cause mechanical issues there would be breakdowns and there were but amazingly they were all audis valencia it's an impressive victory raw is again driven superbly and i won acropoli in in atlanta uh it was a result i never expected that we even can come to the finish because i was thinking maybe the lunch here is too too light to to stay in one piece for for greece the year wore on with both teams always in contention for the championship but then it was time for everyone to head for the bumpy hell of finland and lancia had a problem walter rawl refused to go i didn't like to go to finland because i i don't like jumps [Music] because you know if i want to fly i would be a pilot or not sitting in a car that's no way [Music] because of his no-show audi won easily [Music] however with only three rounds left it was mathematically possible for lancia to win the world championship in san remo and that's something they really wanted to do because san remo well that's italy they'd be winning it in front of their home crowd to do that they'd have to deal with the main feature of the san remo rally dust it's thrown up by a car and a minute later when the next one comes along it's still there which makes seeing where you're going a bit tricky to try and make everything better they fitted a team van with brushes and sent it up the course but this didn't really work so the drivers came up with a cunning alternative on one stage a minute after the german car had set off and the answer was supposed to go it didn't move so the starter went over to see what was wrong i'm really sorry my belt it's i don't know how it's happened it's come undone i know i shouldn't i should have done this before we came to the star line it's my bad really oh now they've all come undone i feel like such an idiot i just need to by the time the problem had been sold the dust luckily had all gone all right we're good to go now i know the door oh there it is annoyingly the officials quickly put a stop to this boss hoggery so if lancia was going to win here on gravel it would all be down to the skill of the driver and boy did walter rawl rise to the occasion looking back in my career it was maybe the best really in my life i have done it was just like like a dream when i was just thinking i want to to cut this corner don't lose 10 centimeters of road the car was going exactly on this point and it was flowing it was just nobody can beat me and then there was the magnificent o37 itself a launcher it it's a perfect thing because it it doing exactly what you want it's like my like my my shoe it fits so perfectly if i just think it should do this one it has done it with man and machine in such perfect harmony rule won a staggering 33 of the 58 stages the team scored a 1-2-3 and as a result they won the world championship david had beaten the four-wheel drive goliath and no two-wheel drive car would ever do that again you

Channel: Amazon Prime Video Nederland

Views: 5,598,558

Rating: 4.9166927 out of 5

Keywords: Films, Amazon Original, Lancia 037, Rally Battle: 1983 Audi Quattro VS. Lancia 037, rally 1983, Amazon Prime, best moments grand tour, Amazon Prime NL, jeremy clarkson, Series, Amazon Prime Video, the grand tour, dashboard, BBC Rally Sprint 1983, The Grand Tour: The 1983 Rally Rivalry, racing, Amazon Prime Nederland, the grand tour jeremy clarkson, 1983 Audi Quattro vs Lancia 037, Audi Quattro, Prime Video NL, favoriete momenten the grand tour, Prime Video Nederland

Id: 6lo4dGTrzr8

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ThatMallGuyTMG]

Useless fun fact: this video actually got me into rallying (more specifically Group B)

[u/PopeliusJones]

I still haven’t watched Ford vs. Ferrari because I feel like the boys (Specifically James) already covered it so well in the first season of The Grand Tour

[u/extra_less]

I wish they would ditch the specials and spend their time on interesting stories with challenges that are tied into the story.

[u/geeky-hawkes]

Agreed these stories were amazing and great for wider context.

[u/Verbaliskaiser91]

My favorite line from this special was “I don’t like jumps”

[u/claptrap5000000]

Hammond telling of Jim Clark's story is probably one of my favourite things from the show.

[u/Golfer_may_lie]

Donut media just did a great podcast episode on this! It's called Past Gas for anyone interested

[u/MBEditorr]

The Dutch version of Amazon Prime posts so many clips of the grand tour its kinda cool actually