[woodcote]

   

HobbyClassic Project HCP-229 Audi Sport Quattro S1 - Walter Röhrl - 1st Pikes Peak 1987. EUR145.00 clean / EUR150 dirty.

Not many slot car releases have got me this excited in a long time. The latest HobbyClassic Project is a 250-unit run of Walter Röhrl's record-breaking Audi Sport Quattro S1 with all the hillclimb trimmings. Produced in resin, the first 200 are in a 'clean' finish, the final 50 in an after-race 'dirty' version.

       

The Quattro S1 was a beast, but after Group B was banned in international rallying, manufacturers were looking at ways to exploit the vast development costs that had been pumped into the projects. Pikes Peak had been a happy hunting ground for Audi the previous two years, but this definitive evolution of the S1 was the ultimate Audi hillclimb monster. Tuned to 600 bhp, the Quattro was the first car to complete the course - then mostly gravel - in under 11 minutes...



Röhrl's time of 10minutes 47.850 seconds would stand for only 12 months, Ari Vatanen shaving half a second off the time in his modified Peugeot 405 T16, a run immortalised in Jean Louis Mourey's mercurial short film Climb Dance.

The dirt on the 'after-race' version is subtle and does look very nicely done for 5 Euros extra...

       

And everything comes packed very carefully, like all HobbyClassic products...

   


Mechanically, the chassis is fitted with an inline S-Can motor and all-wheel-drive. Because I think I'd definitely want to build a hillclimb track and run this thing.

And the price... It's not complete madness, especially for a short-run resin car. If you want one, the clean version is available from HobbyClassic here and the dirty version here.

[BAracer]

Am I right in thinking this is based on the next SRC release?

Just checked...they are doing the Group B version
   

[BAracer]

Double band AWD on the Hobby Classic car... serious stuff.