Susanne Kottulinsky

Susanne Kottulinsky was Sweden’s leading woman rally driver in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Her best WRC finish was thirteenth, in the 1986 Swedish Rally. She was driving a Volvo 240. This was one of ten World Championship rallies she entered, five of them in Sweden and five in the UK. Her best year for the RAC Rally was 1985, when she was 17th and first in Class A8, also in the Volvo. The RAC was also her first WRC event in 1982, before she even entered her home rally. She was 47th overall in an Opel Ascona.

She sampled a number of cars during her long career (over 20 years), but was most competitive in the Volvo, her regular car between 1984 and 1986, and the Audi 200 Quattro she used in 1987 and 1988. She picked up multiple top-ten finishes in both of these cars. 

From the beginning of her international career in 1982, Susanne always seemed to run best in Germany and Austria, better even than on the Swedish snow rallies in which she would be expected to excel. Her first international top ten was a tenth place in the Eisenwurzen Pyhrn Rally, held in Austria in 1983. She was driving the Ascona. The same event in 1984 gave her a sixth place in the Volvo and she followed this up with her first big German finish, an eighth place in the ADAC 3-Städte Rally. After a year spent competing all around northern Europe in the Volvo in 1986, she began to concentrate almost exclusively on the German championship.

Her first season proper in Germany coincided with her move to Audi as a works-supported driver for VAG Sweden. She was following in the wheeltracks of 1986 champion Michele Mouton and part of a strong cohort of female talent that was finally being taken seriously again. The season started well, with a fifth place in the Sachs Winter Rally. This was five places better than her future husband, Jerry Ahlin managed and the best of the group N finishers. Two more top-tens and a class win in the Rallye Hessen were enough to secure championship fifth.

Although Susanne became a more consistent top-ten finisher in 1988, the podium places were locked out by fellow Audi driver Armin Schwarz and Ronald Holzer’s Lancia Delta Integrale. She was fifth again, with another fifth place at Baden-Wurttemberg as her best rally finish. 

After this, she appears much more infrequently on the entry lists. She married Jerry Ahlin and the pair teamed up as “Team Ahlinsky” for a few rallies in Sweden and Germany between 1990 and 1991, using an Audi. Susanne earned a sixth place in the 1991 Berglagsrallyt in Sweden.

After a long lay-off, she proved that she still had it in 2002. She was eighth in the ADAC 3-Städte Rally, driving a Mitsubishi Lancer, despite not having driven in a major rally since 1995. Since then, she has occasionally come out of retirement for German rally show events, driving the Audi.

Her daughter is touring car racer, Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky. Mikaela is the third generation of Kottulinskys in motorsport, alongside her brother Fredrik Ahlin who competes in rallying. Susanne’s father was Freddy Kottulinsky, who mostly rallied in Sweden, and even her mother Barbel had a go at navigating.

(Image copyright Audi/VAG Sweden/rallymemory.blogspot.com)