A couple of weeks before Christmas I went on a drive with some mates, a loose group with modern classic cars. Air-cooled Porsches predominate, but among those are interesting 911 RSs, a 912, an outlaw 356 and a 914.

The non-Porsche members are probably even more interesting, and include a split-window VW Kombi, a Ferrari 328, an Alfa Romeo 105 Berlina, a hard-driven BMW 2002, a super-rare Giocattolo and an unending curiosity of mine, an Audi Quattro (Typ 85).

The boxy, ’80s Audi is probably the most normal-looking vehicle of this lot. Yet it’s usually the one – well, if the Giocattolo’s not around – that gets the most attention when we pull up anywhere for coffee and doughnuts.

I’m glad it’s not just me that has such reverence for this car. Mine even pre-dates the beginning of the Quattro’s Group B rally dominance, having heard all kinds of rumours of this new coupe with supernatural powers. In the early-1980s I once spotted a German-registered BMW M1 in Sydney; only a Quattro could have topped it.

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Quattros were back on my mind again just after Christmas, when something came on the TV news about Kerry Packer. I realised it was the 20th anniversary of the Big Fella’s passing.

Packer dominated both our television and magazine landscapes. I can’t think of an equivalent in today’s fractured media and business environment. Yet he was a billionaire with whom the public could relate, not least through his passion for sport, a flutter – and cars.

Thanks to owning Wheels, Packer had the scoop on the latest must-have machinery. Or “can’t-have” machinery: in the 1970s and ’80s, Australian motoring was isolated by huge import tariffs and prohibitive regulations.

Abetted by his mate Kevin Bartlett, Packer would work the connections to get his hands on a succession of cool cars.

I wrote 10 years ago about the fabled Jaguar XJ-S twin-turbo, reputed to make 850kW, between self-immolations. It’s an even better story, told to me by Bartlett, of the covert operation that kidnapped a Quattro for KP.

In 1981, a silver left-hand drive Quattro, build number 421, was being shipped from Germany to a dealer in Madagascar. It was detoured via Sydney for evaluation by Audi’s Australian importer, LNC Industries.

LNC’s PR man was Phil Scott, later editor of Wheels and a mate of Bartlett, for whom he arranged a sneaky drive. Shortly after, Packer happened to ask about a suitable car for the five-hour blasts from Sydney to Ellerston, his vast country estate.

“I said, well, I just had a drive of an Audi Quattro last week,” KB recounted. “He said, ‘What the f’*&%‘s that?’ I told him and he said, ‘Uh, well we’d better have one of them …’” Bartlett had to explain that the car was already allocated, it was left-hand drive an it couldn’t be registered. Said Packer: “Forget about the cost. If it’s that f*^#in’ good, we’ll have it.”

Bartlett had an inkling that he could pass rego in the ACT if he could convert the Quattro, using related Audi 5+5 parts. But even if not, “we would have just taken it up to Ellerston and left it there. A bush-basher.”

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A flurry of phone calls between Australia and Ingolstadt led to Bartlett’s flying to Germany to meet engineer Roland Gumpert, the boss of Audi Sport. The factory hadn’t planned to build the Quattro in right-hook, but a parts list was drawn up and the bits followed Bartlett back to Sydney.

As with Packer’s Jag, sightings of the Quattro were rare and exciting. Meanwhile, the factory’s 1982 decision to build in RHD prompted Packer to buy another to keep in the UK. That black car was later imported to Australia, where it was joined by a third, silver one.

“Yeah, he did like them,” KB remembered.

Did he enjoy driving them? “Took him a while,” KB said. “Took me a while, too. You had to pitch it into corners really aggressively, or you’d just understeer straight off the road. He got to do it quite well, actually.

“Nearly all the way from the highway to Ellerston was dirt then and he had a ball through there. He enjoyed his motoring.”

This article first appeared in the February 2026 issue of Wheels. Subscribe here and gain access to 12 issues for $109 plus online access to every Wheels issue since 1953.