Walter Röhrl

Lore & Background

Röhrl grew up as the youngest of the three children of a stonemason in Regensburg, Bavaria, near Munich. His parents separated when he was ten years old. From then on he lived with his mother. After leaving school he completed a commercial education at Bishop's Ordinariate Regensburg. At the age of 16, Röhrl began working for the commercial director of a company that legally represented the Bishop of Regensburg along with six further Bishops in Bavaria, and skied in his spare time. In time he became a qualified ski instructor and a keen driver, and became the chauffeur to the commercial director, covering up to 120,000 kilometres annually. Röhrl was invited to drive his first rally in 1968.

Reader's Guide

Röhrl was a World Rally Championship favourite throughout the 1970s and 1980s, winning the Monte Carlo Rally four times with four different marques. His co-driver for many years was Christian Geistdörfer. His Fiat 131 Abarth carried him to the 1980 title, clinched with his victory in that year's San Remo rally. For 1981, Röhrl signed a five-year deal with Mercedes-Benz, who planned to compete with a 500 SL roadster in 1981 and 1982, to be followed by a purpose-built, mid-engined, turbocharged Group B car in 1983. In the end, Mercedes-Benz withdrew shortly before the first rally of the season and cancelled the Group B program. Röhrl was given a DM 900,000 lump sum and release from his five-year contract, but too late in the season to get a seat. A few months later, Röhrl and Geistdörfer took a short-term engagement with Porsche and campaigned a Porsche 924 Carrera GTS in six rounds of the German rally championship. Röhrl also started the San Remo rally in a Porsche 911 SC, but was forced to retire with driveshaft trouble while in second place. Röhrl has referred to this as his most bitter retirement, as he had been hoping that a victory would help coax Porsche into committing to a full WRC effort. It was arguably his second title, in the 1982 World Rally Championship season, that impressed most of all, with Röhrl fending off four-wheel drive opposition led by Audi's resurgent Michèle Mouton, to take the title by virtue of consistency in his increasingly outmoded rear-drive Opel Ascona 400. It was also during this time that he won the African Rally Championship in 1982. However, shortly after winning the championship, he was fired from the team by team manager Tony Fall because he disliked competing in the RAC rally (the rally he had little success in). Röhrl had already had severe arguments with Fall about publicity activities for the team sponsor, tobacco company Rothmans. Röhrl, as a strict nonsmoker, refused to do any filming for Rothmans publicity spots, claiming that he had been hired as a driver, not an actor, and that he could not see any sense in promoting tobacco as a non-smoker. In 1983, he joined Lancia to pilot the new, rear-wheel drive Lancia 037, before finally changing his machinery in 1984 to the four-wheel drive Audi Quattro, a car produced in his home state of Bavaria.

Did You Know?

• Röhrl set the Pikes Peak record in 1987 in 10 minutes and 47.850 seconds.
• He was elected 'Rallye driver of the millennium' in France in November 2000.