One of the first examples of the Audi Sport Quattro assembled in 1984 will cross the auction block in Arizona in late January, set to bring its seller between $575,000 and $700,000. There are conflicting reports on whether the total production run amounted to 214 or 224 such vehicles.
The street-legal Sport Quattro model (see video) hit the market in the mid-1980s solely because Audi had to homologate its Rally Group B counterpart. The example seen here was one of the few sold new in Japan. Originally purchased by Yoshikuni Okamoto, a collector, it underwent regular maintenance and was barely driven. It had slightly more than 7,000 km (4,350 miles) on the odometer by the time Okamoto decided to sell it to a rally team from the United States in mid-2010s.
The team has kept the car in a climate-controlled room and also treated it as a precious museum exhibit. The odometer currently shows around 8,800 km (5,470 miles) of use.
Like the other Sport Quattro models, this one received a 2.1-liter turbocharged five-cylinder engine at the factory. According to different sources, these units were rather varied in terms of power output, churning out between 200 and 306 PS (197–300 hp; 145–224 kW) depending on the modification. Just how much power the example on sale has is unknown.