Desert Princess

We featured Wolf Dieter Ihle’s twin-engined Pikes Peak Golf a couple of years ago and it transpires that’s not the only Mk2 in his incredible rally car collection.

Written by: Robb Pritchard

Photos By: Robb Pritchard

A walk through Wolf-Dieter Ihle’s impressive collection will take you past some incredible rally cars from ages past. Former ex-works Audis, such as an ex-Blomqvist S1E2 and the ex-Mouton Sport Quattro, side side-by-side with a prototype Porsche 924 GTS, ex-Röhrl Opel Ascona A and 400, ex-Vatanen Manta 400, ex-Ickx Dakar Porsche 953 and the famous Pikes Peak twin-engined Mk2 Golf, which we featured here a few years ago.

There is a definite theme for Ihle’s collection; he focuses on rally cars from his native Germany. That’s why, some twelve years ago, when this ex-factory Group A VW Golf GTi came up for sale, he snapped it up.

While the World Rally Championship was in the throes of the legendary Group B era with the flying, fire-spitting monsters, the much less modified Group A class was an equally competitive place to be, with many manufacturers involved. Kenneth Eriksson won the Group A World Championship in 1986, against four-wheel drive Audis, and works efforts from Renault. But when the championship turned to Group A regulations as the top class for 1987, the front-wheel drive Golf found itself far outclassed by four-wheel drive cars from Lancia, Mazda, Audi and Ford. Nevertheless, a 3rd place in Portugal and 2nd in New Zealand was crowned with a superb victory in the gruelling Ivory Coast rally, and event almost as rough as the Safari. The light and nimble Golf triumphed ahead of some serious opposition from the much-favoured works Nissan 200ZXs and Toyota Supras.

In the 1987 driver’s championship, Eriksson finished 4th, the same place as Volkswagen finished in the manufacturer’s title. VW also won the FIA short-lived two-wheel drive title that year. 1988 was not such a successful year though. The VW team’s best showing was at the East African Safari Rally. Thanks in part to an advantageous starting position draw which saw Erwin Weber wear the
No1 on the doors, he ended the first day leading the event. Many rivals had trouble on the incredibly tough and long, teammate Lars-Eric Torph, in our featured car, among them. The trouble he hit came in the form of a cow wandering across the road – the bull bars on the front of the cars for the Safari Rally aren’t just there for show. Not only did he hit the cow, he also rolled into the ditch. He managed to finish Day 1, but clutch and gearbox problems slowed him down on Day 2, and a broken radiator led to the engine overheating, which forced a retirement.

On the same day, Weber lost an hour with transmission problems and then retired with broken steering. Weber took 3rd in the 1990 Rally of New Zealand, but after that, VW didn’t see another WRC podium until the Polo R some quarter of a century later.

This particular VW’s competitive life was far from over, though. Later in 1988, it was sold to the Austrian-based Vredestein Rally Team. Although they converted to tarmac spec, they kept it in the nice two-tone blue works livery and in the Austrian Rally Championship, their driver Raimund Baumschlager finished 3rd on the Kärnten-Rallye. A few weeks later he finished an impressive 8th overall at the WRC Rallye San Remo, the first car behind the works efforts from Lancia and Ford.

The following year brought even more success. Baumschlager competed in both
the Austrian Rally Championship, as well as the much more competitive European Rally Championship, where he won the Rallye Bohemia, ahead of the all-conquering Lancias. The two WRC events he entered in the car, rally Portugal and the Acropolis, both sadly ended in retirement. An accident in Portugal and gearbox failure in Greece.

In 1990 the Vredestein Rally Team upgraded to a newer Golf for Baumschlager, so our featured one was demoted to a recce car, with its only outing being on the Rallye Niederösterreich, where Baumschlager finished 2nd. For 1991, thanks in part to his results in our featured Golf, he became a works VW driver to drive a G60 Rallye in the German Rally Championship, and the German rounds of the ERC, and so the team sold the Golf.

Its third owner was another Austrian, Wilfried Wiedner. Now painted blue, he competed in the 1991 Austrian Rally Championship and with very consistent results, including a podium in one rally, finished as runner up in the championship… which concluded the car’s homologated competition life as its next owners didn’t compete with it. The little Golf was still far from done, though. After nearly twenty years of inactivity, it was given a thorough restoration and Christoph Weber used it to great effect in the 2009 Austrian Historic Rally Championship… which he won. He finished as runner-up to following year in the Austrian Rally Challenge, but sold the car to its current owner Ihle in 2012. Another restoration, this time concerned with putting it back into the glory of its high-profile 1988 Safari condition and specification.

Some collectors like to keep their cars in pristine condition, untouched, just for display. Others, though, like to enjoy their prize possessions as they were intended; being driven to their limits on forest stages. Ihle is firmly in the latter category.

When he bought this Golf, he knew it was a former European Rally Championship car, and thought that was all it was. He is a stickler for accuracy and authenticity though and began thoroughly researching the car’s past sending its VIN number to someone who knows how to trace a car’s history, he was very surprised to find out that it wasn’t just an ERC car he owned, but a World Championship one. “It’s not every day you accidentally buy a WRC car,” Ihle smiles.

If you know what you are looking for, there are other clues that it is a Safari car. There is a lot more welding seams in the chassis that other cars didn’t have because of the extra weight. There are also reinforced driveshafts, front wishbones, suspension strut mountings, and wheel bearing housings. “It was quite a nice surprise.” And so the project to restore it to its former African glory began. Not in Baumschlager colours, but in Torph’s 1988 Safari spec.

It had been in tarmac specification since it had been sold by the works team in the late ’80s and absolutely nothing of its Safari past remained. “Fortunately it was quite easy to find parts,” Ihle says. “Much, much easier than with Audi. VW sold Safari spec Golfs to privateers in Africa so there was a much bigger parts stock for the heavy-duty, extra travel shocks the terrain needed.

There was no way to purchase a bull bar, but from the period photos, a local fabrication company managed to create the perfect replica. A new 90 L tank was fitted in the back and Ihle even went as far as changing the roll cage from the steel one to an aluminium version. “An aluminium cage is not quite as safe as a steel one, of course, but the car is only going to be entered in demonstration events, such as the Eifel Rally, not full competition ones, so it will be fine. I like my cars to be fully authentic.”

In more than a decade that Ihle has owned the special Golf, his most endearing memory with it is from a few years ago when at one of those rally show events he let a certain Stig Blomqvist take the wheel. Stig is perhaps better known for his exploits behind the wheel of Saabs, Audis and Fords over his distinguished career, but he was also a works VW driver. Lars-Eric Torph was contracted for the Safari rally in 1989, but was unfortunately killed as a spectator at that year’s Monte Carlo rally when Alex Fioro crashed. And so Stig was drafted in for the African endurance event. He enjoyed driving Ihle’s Golf, especially as it was his first time back behind the wheel of such car for over thirty years.

It might not give the same seat of your pants experience as the Group B Audi, for example, but the Golf is a valued addition to Ihle’s collection. “Driving of the car is quite nice because they are light compared to the 4wd Audis. The limited slip is very active and you feel it in the steering quite a lot. But it’s a real rally car and I like to drive it as much as I do all my cars!”

Some companies, especially ones big enough to have museums like Audi and Porsche, like to work with Ihle to display some of his cars for official displays, but not VW. “They seem to be almost embarrassed about their petrol past,” Ihle says. “Everything is electric for them now. And it turns out that I have more classic ex-works rally VWs than VW does!”