Buffum Crashes Borrowed Sport quattro

[CurtEgerer]

Testing for R&T magazine. Oops! I love his quote: "Well, I always say, we're here for a good time, not a long time."

audi-sport-quattro-series-1-03_gallery_image_large.jpg

Link to Road & Track Magazine article: John Buffum World Rally Championship Driver - The Stuff of Legend

[LongRanger]

Stuff 'em Buffum

[mrgreenjeans]

I believe this is Audi's Museum car that they had there, and most likely the Car donated by
Audi Club of America founder Frank Beddor.
Believe there was a write up about a year ago in Quattro Club magazine about this very car , a very low mile example.
Seem to remember Frank had 5 of these, of the slightly more than 200 made.

Sad to read in this R and T clip that they think about 40 have been lost to 'incidents'

Had a ride in one for several laps at BIR in the mid 80's with Franks's son Steve. Both John Buffum and Walter Rohrl made the trek up to the track and were good friends and fellow instructors with the Beddor family during the early days of the Club, and most likely this car had been there too in its past......
What a rocket ride, lots of fun

[Kris Clewell]

oh thats a pity.

[CurtEgerer]

Stuff 'em Buffum

Rick, the old nickname was the first thing I thought when I saw the article title

[Jim Garfield]

Nice article. The car doesn't look too badly dinged, I wonder if the "different saying" he was thinking of was "eff'm if they cant take a joke"?

He is the rally master and lays out the course for a rally that I'm hoping to do in Feb in VT. It starts at 6pm and ends at 6am over mostly mountain roads from what I've heard.

edit: speling

[LongRanger]

. . . car doesn't look to badly dinged . . .

If it was any other car, maybe . . .

I looked at one of these cars, once --- up-close, in detail . . . see post #7 . . .

http://www.early911sregistry.org/for...attro%2C+sport

Not exactly the sorta car that I'd wanna try to build . . . let alone repair. Maybe the metal bits + drive-train are repairable, suspension, exhaust, + any of the assembly-line AUDI stuff --- bumpers + lights, etc

The problem is almost the entire structure of the car --- body-work, inner- + outer-panels, etc are hand-made/-fitted/glued-together/pre-historic CF . . . kooky limited-run bits made 2 decades, ago, so --- unless AUDI's ready to write some big checks + re-fab all that stuff, again. . . . this car's prolly a 'write-off' --- destined to donate parts for other running cars

[Haasman]

Saw Buffum run through the Olympic Woods in Washington in the mid-eighties. Unbelievable. Never had seen first-hand a rally but watching Buffum and the Audi Quattro run was humbling. Master work.

Left work early (OK in suit n tie, ruined my shoes, mud everywhere) and would do it again in a minute.

The contrast of the wet quiet woods, and then the all-out ten-tenths shriek of the cars running past and then the silence once again. Wow ...

Haasman

[CurtEgerer]

I guess this particular car has had at least 2 other previous accidents during 'media' testing.

Haasman - your description sounds exactly like the POR in 1985. Skip ahead to 1:00 and turn it up.

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/6317828?byline=0&amp;portrait=0&amp;badge=0&amp;co lor=ff9933" width="800" height="600" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/6317828">John Buffum Sport quattro 1985 POR</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1511379">cegerer</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

[Haasman]

Wow .... THANK YOU! Exactly ..... Curt. (I played this over several times ....)

Rally drivers- the 10/10's masters. Love it.

Thanks again.

Haasman