VW attacked Pikes Peak from 1985 to 1987 with different twin engined Golfs. The most extreme example having two 16V 1800cc turbo engines mounted longitudinally!
Audi's first attempt was also in 1985 when Michele Mouton blasted a Sport quattro to the top in a winning 11 minutes 25.39 seconds, a record then! How humiliating for the good old boys in their big super stock Chevys and Dodges, beaten by a woman!

In 1986 Audi was back again. this time with Bobby Unser Sr. Driving an improved Sport quattro. Its hardly surprising that he won the event, but what is amazing was his time: 16 seconds quicker than Michele Mouton’s effort the previous year, with 11 minutes 9.22 seconds.

In 1987 things got serious. Peugeot appeared for the first time with specially prepared rear engined 205 turbo 16s, driven by ’87 Paris-Dakar winner Ari Vatanen, five time Safari rally winner Shekhar Mehta and Italian rallyist Andrea Zanussi. Other cars included an MG Metro 6R4, Ford RS-200s, 4WD Mazda RX7s as well as the usual open wheelers and super stock car. Audi’s only entrant was a Batmobile S1 Sport quattro driven by Walter Rohrl.

The winner ? Although the Peugeot was fastest in practice, the event went to the amazing Walter Rohrl, who blasted the Audi to the top in an amazing 10:47.85, shattering Bobby Unser’s record by 21.4 seconds ! This was Walter Rohrl’s first ever attempt at Pikes Peak, and he beat Ari Vatanen’s Peugeot by more than 15 seconds. The best V8 open wheeler buggies were a further 20 seconds behind, with the ungainly super stockers more than one and a half minutes off the pace.

Audi did not return to Pikes Peak in 1988, concentrating instead on the USA Trans Am series (which they went on to win!) with the Audi 200 quattro. They had proved their point. In Audi’s absence, Ari Vatanen did go on to win the 1988 Pikes Peak in a T16. The last time the event saw the awesome Group B rally cars, with a record time of 10:47.22.

To give you an idea of the kind of performance GroupB cars were capable of I'll mention that in the 1986 season Henri Toivonen made two laps around the Estoril circuit, during a stage of the Portuguese rally, the fastest of which, in 1 minute and 18,1 seconds, would have qualified him in the sixth position of the F1 Grand Prix that same season. Ayrton Senna had the Pole Position in the 1986 Portuguese Grand Prix in 1 minute and 16,7 seconds...Toivonen was using the Lancia Delta S4 and was accompanied by his usual co-driver Sergio Cresto. Keep in mind however that current GroupA and WRC cars are even faster, overall, than GroupB cars used to be. This is mainly due to technology advances in tire formulations and suspension technology leading to GroupA cars being faster around corners but losing on straights as compared to GroupB cars.