COBI Audi quattro 1980 White Set 24665

COBI's Audi quattro in white is a 1:35 model built from 79 blocks under official Audi licence, 12.5 cm long, with the flared arches of the original reproduced. A sticker sheet is included.

The trick was a hollow shaft

Four-wheel drive existed long before the quattro. What stopped anyone putting it in an ordinary car was the plumbing: sending power to both ends normally meant a transfer case hanging off the gearbox and a second propshaft running alongside the first, which added weight, height and complication.

Audi's engineers solved it by drilling a hole. The secondary shaft in the gearbox was made hollow, so a second shaft could run back through the inside of it, carrying drive forward to the front differential while the outer shaft carried it rearward. No transfer case, no offset, barely any extra weight.

That single piece of packaging is why the quattro could be a normal-looking coupé rather than a raised oddity, and it is why permanent four-wheel drive went from being a specialist solution to something every manufacturer now offers.

In the COBI range

Part of the 1:35 Audi collection. The same car is available in red as set 24664, and set 24666 is the Group 4 rally version with a podium diorama. The Sport quattro S1 E2 is set 24667.

Specifications

Pieces: 79 · Scale: 1:35 · Colour: white · Officially licensed
Model dimensions: 12.5 × 6.5 × 4.5 cm (4.9 × 2.6 × 1.8 in)