In the words of Herwart Kreiner, who was head of Audi Sport at the time: "A works team should have won the Safari Rally in Kenya once". The triumph that refused to come about in the preceding years with the Rally quattro eventually came to pass in 1987, when Audi was already starting to withdraw from the international rally scene: the one-two victory recorded by Mikkola/Hertz and Röhrl/Geistdörfer at the 1987 edition of the Safari Rally.
In that same year, the World Rally Championship was only staged for Group A cars in response to the fatal accidents of the 1986 season. Audi had two car models that met Group A regulations: the Coupé quattro and the 200 quattro. The 200 model had proven itself to be the more robust vehicle during test drives, so two executive saloons in rally trim lined up for the start of the race – with resounding success!