Audi Icons Headline “Rallye Legends” Exhibition at Germany’s Nationales Automuseum

·05.18.2026

For enthusiasts planning a European trip this summer, Germany’s Nationales Automuseum The Loh Collection has unveiled a new exhibition that places some of rallying’s most significant quattro-era machines alongside legends from nearly every major chapter of the sport’s history.

Titled Rallye Legends – A Time Journey on Asphalt, Gravel and Snow, the exhibition opened on March 28 and brings together 35 rally cars spanning everything from pre-war Monte Carlo Rally entrants to Group B monsters, Dakar Rally veterans and World Rally Championship title winners.

For Audi aficionados specifically, the exhibition’s biggest draw may be the inclusion of both an early Audi quattro and the fearsome Audi Sport quattro S1 PDK. The latter represents one of the most extreme evolutions of Audi’s original quattro rally concept, developed during the final and increasingly wild years of the Group B era.

One thing worth noting: the Audi listed is specifically an Audi Sport quattro S1 PDK, which is unusually significant. Most people know the S1 E2, but the PDK development cars represent Audi’s experimental dual-clutch transmission work during the Group B era — essentially an early precursor to the DSG/S tronic lineage Audi would later popularize decades afterward. That’s a pretty deep-cut museum piece if it is indeed the genuine car.

The exhibition traces the evolution of rallying through multiple eras and manufacturers. Group 4 entries include the Lancia Stratos, Opel Ascona 400 and early Audi quattro, while the Group B section expands to include machines such as the Lancia Rally 037, Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 and Ford RS200.

Drivers represented throughout the collection include many of rallying’s most recognizable names, among them Walter Röhrl, Michèle Mouton, Hannu Mikkola, Henri Toivonen and Sébastien Loeb.

The exhibition also continues the museum’s increasingly ambitious approach to temporary displays. The Nationales Automuseum opened in 2023 and has quickly become one of Europe’s more significant automotive museum destinations, with approximately 160 vehicles displayed across 7,500 square meters on a restored industrial site in central Germany.

Located in Dietzhölztal-Ewersbach in the German state of Hesse, the museum sits roughly between Frankfurt and Cologne, making it relatively accessible for travelers building itineraries around Nürburgring visits, Audi Tradition stops in Ingolstadt or broader German automotive tourism.

Alongside the exhibition, the museum is also releasing a companion book titled Rallye Legends – A Time Journey on Asphalt, Gravel and Snow, published in both German and English through Motorbuch-Verlag. The volume includes contributions from motorsport author Jörg Walz and a foreword by longtime Röhrl co-driver Christian Geistdörfer.

Worth noting, the museum is known to house a genuine Auto Union Type D. That is an enormously important car historically — one of the surviving mid-engined Silver Arrows from the late 1930s Auto Union Grand Prix effort that later evolved into the Audi lineage through Auto Union GmbH. Genuine surviving Type Ds are exceptionally rare and generally reside only in top-tier institutional collections.

Since opening, the museum says it has welcomed more than 230,000 visitors and has increasingly become a destination for classic-car rallies and enthusiast tours traveling through Germany. Additionally, it appears to have quietly become one of the strongest Audi and Auto Union collections anywhere outside Ingolstadt itself, which makes it a must-see should you happen to be in the region.

While the museum doesn’t publish a full inventory of what’s in the house at any given time, we’ve assembled a list based on what we know that is there including the cars in the current rotating exhibits.

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