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"Ten seconds into the first photography run for the Audi Sport Quattro Series 1, it becomes obvious that the car is going to crash. The Audi is on a gravel road, arcing into a tight left-hander near Washington&amp;#039;s Mount Olympus. Everyone present can tell the driver is going too fast. The snubnose coupe slews left, toward a steep embankment, then rotates opposite, aimed straight at a three-story drop lined with stumps.   For a moment, it appears as if the Quattro will exit the road and fly down the hill. Then the car snaps back left, simultaneously sliding and slowing. It chunks into the hillside nose-first, with a baritone thump, and shards of Kevlar go flying. When everything is still, a wiry man with thinning gray hair can be seen behind the wheel, head in his hands        Audi Sport Quattro Series 1    &amp;quot;Aw, no,&amp;quot; says John Buffum, the greatest rally driver America has ever produced, the man who drove on this mountain in competition and scored by-God FIA championship points in a full-race version of the car he&amp;#039;s just piled into a hill. &amp;quot;Aw, no.&amp;quot; John Buffum, eleven-time U.S. national rally champion and the first American-born rally driver to score points in FIA competition, is 69 years old. His first big rally appearance, driving a Porsche 911 to twelfth place at Monte Carlo, was in 1969. His best days were arguably in the 1980s, when he was a factory-supported Audi driver and competed in Quattros alongside legends like Mich\u00E8le Mouton. But for all that, he often comes off like a gangly teenager, all exuberance and energy. The morning we were to drive the Quattro, he showed up wearing DC shoes, an Audi Sport T-shirt, and a Rockstar Energy Drink hoodie.        John Buffum    Many drivers use their hands to talk about driving, moving an imaginary wheel or making palm-down motions like fighter pilots. Buffum engages his whole body, throwing his elbows out and hunching his shoulders to show how the car moves, punctuating everything with a big grin. And when the Audi mechanics took the Quattro off its trailer, he could barely stand still. &amp;quot;Look at that turbocharger,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Too big, really. They had two different-size turbos, a point-seven and a point-nine. Point-seven and point-nine what, I don&amp;#039;t know. And they didn&amp;#039;t have any kind of antilag, so we had to left-foot brake the whole way to keep the turbocharger spinning and engine in the power.&amp;quot; He jumps around, pointing out the car&amp;#039;s salient features, exclaiming over the offset radiator, the strut-tower braces, the rollcage built right into the interior and covered in thin vinyl. He even remembers German part names, and we get to hear a rawboned Vermonter say Zugstrebe with a straight face.        Audi Sport Quattro Series 1    It&amp;#039;s easy to see why Buffum&amp;#039;s pumped up; shared history aside, the Quattro is fascinating. It was a poster car in the 1980s, mostly in Europe but also on the walls of American kids who thought the Lamborghini Countach was obvious and brutish. When we asked Audi for a loan of a new and an old Quattro, the company said yes immediately, agreeing that Buffum on his old rally roads would be very cool and a perfect illustration of the brand&amp;#039;s ethos. The Sport Quattro is a cornerstone of Audi&amp;#039;s identity. It was constructed in response to the FIA&amp;#039;s Group B regulations, essentially a clean-sheet dictate that let manufacturers build outlandish, cutting-edge racing cars with few limitations. Group B regs applied to both road racing and rally; cars built for the latter had to be based on a production model and sold to the public, but the rules allowed such freedom\u2014drastically shortened wheelbases, modified suspension geometry, and so on\u2014that the end product often looked little like its forebear.        Audi Sport Quattro Series 1    Group B competition began in 1982, a few years after Audi&amp;#039;s standard Quattro coupe changed the landscape of rally. The car introduced four-wheel drive to the sport and quickly dominated the World Rally Championship; when Audi announced its entry into Group B, it was a foregone conclusion that the machine would be a Quattro. The result was the 306-hp Sport, a hot-rodded Quattro with 12.6 inches cut from its wheelbase. Just over 200 Sport Quattros were built in 1984. No one knows how many are left, though folklore holds that around 40 have been written off. This makes sense, as the car is a handful to drive, shifting from old-fashioned turbo lag below 4,000 rpm to full ferocity with little warning. Its 2.1-liter five-cylinder sits well forward of the front axle, and the wheelbase is short enough that an average-size man can touch both wheels with outstretched fingers. Our photo car had already been bounced off a curb by a former owner\u2014a chunk of one of its gorgeous white wheels was in the trunk, complete with a pithy note about the accident scrawled in Sharpie.        Audi Sport Quattro Series 1    Our Quattro also came fitted with Michelin Pilot Sport Cup rubber, tarmac-oriented semi-slicks that don&amp;#039;t work well on gravel. To his credit, Buffum freely admitted that he had simply forgotten about the tires. He didn&amp;#039;t say why, but it was pretty obvious that one of the best American drivers of the last century just plain got excited. The way most people know the John Buffum story, if they know it at all, is this: Buffum, on leave from the Army in 1969, places a shocking twelfth in the Monte Carlo Rally with co-driver Steve Behr. Then, in the 1980s, when rally started to take off (as it periodically threatens to do), he drives a full-on Group B Quattro in World Rally Championship events in Europe and North America.        Audi Sport Quattro Series 1    This is a good story, but it&amp;#039;s incomplete. It leaves out all the time Buffum spent rallying in anything he could get, from the ordinary (Ford Escort) to the forgotten (Talbot Sunbeam-Lotus) and the just plain unlikely (Triumph TR-7 and TR-8). And it omits his learning curve, a path so steep and littered with broken cars that his nickname was once &amp;quot;Stuff &amp;#039;Em Buffum.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;There are two ways to go fast,&amp;quot; he says, after the Sport crash. &amp;quot;The first way is to start slow and build up to it. And that&amp;#039;s okay.&amp;quot; We&amp;#039;re watching Charlie, an Audi mechanic and the Sport Quattro&amp;#039;s minder, put the car back into its trailer. The Audi PR rep present was surprisingly philosophical about the accident, but he also decided that there would be no more driving until the car had been checked out.        Audi Sport Quattro Series 1    Even scuffed, the Sport is a handsome thing: square flares, purposeful vents, chunky little decklid spoiler. Charlie moves over and around the car, readjusting this and checking that with a practiced care. He&amp;#039;s echoing the general Audi attitude\u2014&amp;quot;Our carbon-and-Kevlar guy will fix it. It&amp;#039;s basically a race car. These things happen&amp;quot;\u2014and seems content with his lot of packing the car up and hauling it off after just a few minutes of action.   &amp;quot;The second way,&amp;quot; Buffum continues, &amp;quot;is to start out driving at 11/10ths, and then learn from your mistakes, and then slow it down a little bit. Just a bit, to 9/10ths, and then keep it there. When I first started becoming really competitive and lost my nickname&amp;quot;\u2014and here he actually digs his toe in the dirt and chuckles a little\u2014&amp;quot;that&amp;#039;s what I had to do. But that&amp;#039;s okay. Life&amp;#039;s about the journey, not the destination.&amp;quot;        Audi Sport Quattro Series 1    Buffum is a guy who likes his aphorisms, but he delivers them in a way that doesn&amp;#039;t make them sound like bumper stickers.   &amp;quot;If you can, that is the way to do it. Go too fast, find out where the edges are, then try to pull yourself back a little. But it&amp;#039;s very hard to pull yourself back a little, very hard.&amp;quot;   Then the man who won 117 national-championship-level events looks at the crunched red Audi as Charlie closes the trailer door.   It&amp;#039;s important to note that rallies were different when Buffum was in his prime. They were significantly longer, for one thing; stages could stretch more than thirty miles and run day or night in quick succession. Modern rallying, with its short, TV-friendly stages and more durable machinery, seems like a sprint race by comparison.        Audi Sport Quattro Series 1    &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s different skills,&amp;quot; Buffum says. &amp;quot;[Now] they drive three twelve-mile stages in a five-hour period. We had three twentyfive-mile stages in the same period, and if anything happened in the middle of that stage, you were screwed\u2014no service on the special stages. And we basically had street tires back then. We had to be extra careful; we knew if we got halfway through, we were probably going to get the last ten miles.&amp;quot;   You can tell he still loves it. (&amp;quot;The sheer commitment of these guys today, it&amp;#039;s impressive. They&amp;#039;re at 10/10ths all the time. And nowadays they can drive over stumps and rocks, the suspensions are so good, with so much travel.&amp;quot;) And he currently manages a highly competitive Rally America team out of his Vermont shop, running Mitsubishis. But he misses the days where getting lost on course was as common a way to lose as anything.        Audi Sport Quattro Series 1    &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s just a different world,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Personally, I preferred the challenge to get through all the different situations, with a new road every hundred yards. That&amp;#039;s the great thing about rally as opposed to road racing: 1,200 different turns versus the same twelve turns a hundred times.&amp;quot;   We&amp;#039;ve come to this subject because Audi has also provided us with a brand-new RS5, both to bring perspective and because the company wants to brag a little. The RS5 is a fantastic car, hitting 60 mph in less than four seconds. It sounds great and even offers a nod to the Quattro with its chunky fender flares.   Buffum thinks it&amp;#039;s just okay. &amp;quot;This car won&amp;#039;t quite do what I&amp;#039;m telling it to,&amp;quot; he says, trying to left-foot brake the RS5 around Olympia&amp;#039;s back roads. He was also a bit disappointed when he learned that Audi didn&amp;#039;t want us taking it down a dirt road.        2013 Audi RS5    &amp;quot;Beautiful street car. But when I try to brake, to settle the car... it doesn&amp;#039;t want to know. It&amp;#039;s too smart for you. The engineers are saying they can design a car that&amp;#039;s better than any driver. It&amp;#039;s a nice touring car. But it doesn&amp;#039;t do what I want it to.&amp;quot;   Later, as we watch R&amp;amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s photographers shoot the RS5, Buffum is unusually quiet, standing motionless with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. He doesn&amp;#039;t seem to be dwelling on the crash, nor does he appear antisocial. Buffum simply has something patient in him, a sense of waiting for the next thing. It&amp;#039;s a stillness often found in top-level athletes from the individual sports. Unfortunately\u2014and it sounds crazy to say this about a multiple champion\u2014we&amp;#039;ll never know exactly how good he was, because his appearances on the world stage were too infrequent.        John Buffum    Consider Buffum&amp;#039;s time with Audi, when he finally had a car worthy of his talent. When he found out about the Quattro, he saw what a leap it was: It didn&amp;#039;t take a genius to realize that more power divided by more wheels equalled more usable speed. At the time, he was a bit marooned; Triumph had stopped making cars the year before, and he was making do with a Peugeot 504. Clearly the Audi was the hot ticket.   So Buffum had &amp;quot;All I Want For Christmas is a Quattro&amp;quot; window decals printed. He worked the phones and his connections. In 1982, his enthusiasm and growing reputation convinced Joe Hoppen, then head of Audi Sport USA, to loan a car for England&amp;#039;s RAC Rally. Hoppen delivered a 320-hp Quattro S2 formerly used by works driver Mich\u00E8le Mouton. Legend holds that, when Buffum took delivery, the roof and hood were dented from crew members dancing on the car after a victory.        2013 Audi RS5    &amp;quot;It was a real shoestring type of effort,&amp;quot; Buffum says. &amp;quot;We took the car, stuffed in as many spare parts as we could, got friends to help. We did okay. We were twelfth, I think. Then, next year, BFGoodrich gave me some money to do five events in Europe.&amp;quot;   Buffum&amp;#039;s European career was a success but not a blockbuster. He was unstoppable in America, winning almost everything he entered and earning a championship every year that he drove an Audi. But European motorsport, then as now, was different from American racing. Buffum had it easier than most Americans; he had reliable sponsorship and decent equipment. He notched a fifth-place finish in the 1984 WRC Acropolis Rally, running against works teams, and he won the WRC Cyprus Rally that same year. He can&amp;#039;t decide which success he&amp;#039;s more proud of.   &amp;quot;Well, you can never discount a win, but the Acropolis rally was a Grade 4, the most difficult grade on the scale. So naturally I&amp;#039;m proud of that.&amp;quot; Then another aphorism: &amp;quot;I believe, at the end of the day, your record speaks for itself.&amp;quot;        2013 Audi RS5    What speaks most to American rally fans is this: On the same Washington mountain where we&amp;#039;re now standing, Buffum drove to a triumphant third, behind two full-boat factory teams, in the last FIA event to allow Group B cars\u2014Washington&amp;#039;s 1986 Olympus Rally. Europe had outlawed Group B machines the year before\u2014too many drivers and spectators were getting killed\u2014and North America would ban them for 1987.   Buffum is philosophical about that. &amp;quot;The Sport Quattro I had was different from the street car, but it wasn&amp;#039;t night and day,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Some of the other cars running, with ground effects and Kevlar and fuel tanks under the drivers&amp;#039; seats, well, that was kind of crazy. But Audi went racing with modified street cars, so it wasn&amp;#039;t as science fiction as it could have been. Not until they cut the cars down and shortened them. Then, all of a sudden, you had a car that doesn&amp;#039;t handle as well with at least 100 more horsepower. Now we&amp;#039;re starting to get, well, not a great idea.&amp;quot;        2013 Audi RS5    &amp;quot;What we wanted was the long-wheelbase car with the added power. That, we could slide more easily. You couldn&amp;#039;t even drive the short cars around the corners. You had to ease them around&amp;quot;\u2014and here he does his elbows-out, big grin, whole-body-as-the-car thing\u2014&amp;quot;then drag race to the next turn. But I was never scared because of the power.&amp;quot;   &amp;quot;But yeah,&amp;quot; he adds, &amp;quot;they were probably too much.&amp;quot; It seems practiced, something he&amp;#039;s learned he has to say.   Over pancakes the next day, which Buffum eats with gusto but no butter, I ask what seems like an obvious question: Does he regret not going for it all? Does he wish he&amp;#039;d chased the dream, going to Europe and hunting a works ride in the WRC?        2013 Audi RS5    No, he says; he was content. &amp;quot;I think I tend to be more realistic. There were ten or fifteen drivers at the top, and I was in the next group of twenty or thirty drivers. Very good, but not as good as the world champions\u2014Al\u00E9n, Blomqvist, Mikkola. I needed to be as good as I was at 41 when I was 35. And I wasn&amp;#039;t.   &amp;quot;What it was, was: two roads diverged in a yellow wood...&amp;quot; And then John Buffum proceeds to recite Robert Frost&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;The Road Not Taken,&amp;quot; right there at the breakfast table, right down to the line about the road less traveled making all the difference.   It&amp;#039;s a nice moment. It&amp;#039;s hard to hear that and not believe Buffum is content to manage his Rally America team and golf and watch television with his wife. But a better insight came the day before, when photographers were shooting his Audi T-shirt and belt buckle and he was still feeling sheepish about biffing the Quattro.      2013 Audi RS5 &amp;amp;amp; Audi Sport Quattro Series 1    He&amp;#039;d already trotted out the obvious get-back-on-the-horse, never-too-old-to-learn-from-mistakes stuff. Attempting to sum up whatever it was that made him slide a car into a ditch, John Buffum solemnly said, &amp;quot;Well, I always say, we&amp;#039;re here for a good time, not a long time.&amp;quot;   Then he grinned again and shuffled and said, &amp;quot;Well, actually, I was thinking of a different saying. But that&amp;#039;s good, too.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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