Walter Röhrl was born in Regensburg, Bavaria, in 1947, and was driving a bishop’s car for a living when a friend persuaded him to try rallying. He was precise, analytical and famously unwilling to take risks he had not calculated — the opposite of the flat-out image of the sport.
He was world champion twice, in 1980 with a Fiat 131 Abarth and in 1982 with an Opel Ascona 400, and he won the Monte Carlo Rally four times with four different manufacturers: Fiat, Opel, Lancia and Audi. With his co-driver Christian Geistdörfer he formed one of the great partnerships of the era.
In 1983 he drove for Lancia with the 037 — the last two-wheel-drive car to win the manufacturers’ championship — and chose to contest only the events he thought mattered, helping Lancia to the title against Audi’s four-wheel-drive quattros. He then joined Audi, and in 1987 won the Pikes Peak hill climb in the Sport quattro S1, setting a record.
Group B, the unlimited category that produced the fastest and most dangerous rally cars ever built, was closed down after the fatal accidents of 1986, and Röhrl withdrew from full-time rallying soon after. In 1993 he began a second career at Porsche as a development and test driver, and generations of 911s and other Porsches have been signed off after his laps of the Nürburgring.
The Lancia 037 and the Audi quattro in this catalogue both belong to his story: the last two-wheel-drive car to win the makes’ title, and the four-wheel-drive car that ended that era.
Foto: Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
The cars
Cars in the catalog he drove, won in, or that were named after him.
