7 ms·

The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever

80 points by Thevet 12y ago

Yhippa 12y ago
Thank goodness it did. The things drivers can do with rally cars is amazing. By far my favorite sport to watch. I'm sad that it didn't really catch on in the USA. The format is unlike anything that would sell commercially here.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  It probably does not catch up there because you'd need a bunch of policemen to prevent spectators from being run over by cars losing control :)
- hengheng 12y ago
  In the days of YouTube celebs and Twitch, I can see a new future for rally spectating.
- ifcho 12y ago
  Actually, after the ban of the cars, the manufacturers looked for other races where they could use their monsters. They took them to Dakar, and to the famous Pikes Peak hillclimb race in the USA. Peugeot made a very good movie about it (although it is in a 405T16, which technically never raced group B, the car is basically a 205 T16 with another body shell) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEuZG37gFdM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEuZG37gFdM
  - darklajid 12y ago
    I like the part at 3:30 where the driver has to drive with one hand to see anything.. Actually: Comparing that run to this one here [1] from the 'recent' past I'm even more impressed. Seems like the original video was awfully fast - and on a dirt road at that time? 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y20CLumT2Sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y20CLumT2Sg
makeitsuckless 12y ago
It also nearly killed the sport. Other manufacturers responded with Group B racing monsters of their own, like the Lancia Delta S4, which were high tech prototypes only thinly disguised as road cars. The result was exploding costs, exploding popularity (hundreds thousands of people lining the stages without the protection of normal circuit racing) and a series of deadly accidents, eventually leading to the end of the Group B category and a long decline in the sport's popularity.
- hudibras 12y ago
  >exploding popularity (hundreds thousands of people lining the stages without the protection of normal circuit racing) and a series of deadly accidents, eventually leading to the end of the Group B category I know next-to-nothing about rally racing, but that last photo in the article must highlight what you're talking about: a TV cameraman standing about six feet away from a speeding car on a dirt road. Yikes!
  - Nr7 12y ago
    Actually more like this: http://www.motormavens.com/emAlbum/albums/Contributors/Patrick%20McCullagh/Webmining/_fullsize/BettegaPortugal1984.jpg http://www.motormavens.com/emAlbum/albums/Contributors/Patri... Portuguese rally fans especially were completely insane back then.
    - hudibras 12y ago
      O dear. If my calculations are correct, those guys in the street have around eight tenths of a second to get out of the way.
      - slayed0 12y ago
        Never tell me the odds
  - astrobe_ 12y ago
    This guy is actually relatively safe, because he is in the "inside" of the turn. The most dangerous places are the "outsides" of turns, where cars out-of-control are more likely to go. I believe that it is a common security measure to place people on the insides rather than the outsides.
Nr7 12y ago
It was amazing what the drivers did with these Group B monsters in the mid 80s, considering how different of a sport rallying was back then. The cars were at best several hundreds of horsepowers more powerful than current wrc cars, with much inferior handling. Most cars, if any, didn't even have power steering back then. Also the races were much longer taking place over about 5 days compared to the 3 day events nowadays. One event had about 40-50 special stages back then when now there are about 15-25 and most of those are just the same stages repeated. In addition they used to drive both day and night while while getting only a few hours of sleep per night. I'm sure current rally races are still pretty grueling events, but those drivers in the 80s must have been superhuman. I'm still glad that things have changed. If they hadn't cancelled Group B the fatality count would have just increased. The cars were getting totally out of hand. Some rumors say that some prototype cars already built for the 87 season had close to 1000 horsepowers.
- mauricemir 12y ago
  I recall seeing and hearing a group B audi during a road transit stage - the sound of the engine crackling and poping as the driver drove slowly through town was amazing
  - Nr7 12y ago
    That 5 cylinder engine makes such amazing sounds. I saw the Finnish rally legend Juha Kankkunen drive his own Sport Quattro S1 in a spectator event in Helsinki last summer. It completely blew my mind. :)
- exDM69 12y ago
  These cars were crazy difficult to drive, they had a "locked" four wheel drive system that is similar to an agricultural tractor so you have to slide the car around slow corners or the engine stalls (spectacular and noisy, but not really fast). They had an unsynchronized H-shifter gearbox that requires double declutching on downshifts and careful power application given the huge turbo boost. The driver has to be able to use the left and right foot for braking and be able to press all three pedals at once momentarily when downshifting under braking (left foot on the clutch, right foot toe on the brake and blipping the throttle with the outside of the foot, misleadingly called "heel'n'toe"). Here's a really good clip of Walter Röhrl putting an Audi Quattro through its paces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyVHj3sHVHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyVHj3sHVHQ
venomsnake 12y ago
Just by the title I knew it was Quattro ... such an amazing piece of engineering of the greatest VW generation ever ... that and Golf I&II gt redefined fun in cars.
venomsnake 12y ago
Just by the title I knew it was Quattro ... such an amazing piece of engineering of the greatest VW generation ever ... that and Golf I&II gt redefined fun in cars.
exar0815 12y ago
The article makes me really sad, but describes the best time in Rally sports. Group B cars made the rallye an event which had as much popularity as the formula 1. It was a time when Racing was 50% raw power and 50% talent, and it is no that it's major racing series, say Group B rally, Group C touring cars or the formula one gave birth to legends like Rohrl, Bellof or Senna. This is an attractivity that is completely lost in modern racing, really, with its small, fuel saving, ecologically correct "cars". Hell, it's racing, not a children's playground. Thank God there's LMP...
- rodgerd 12y ago
  > This is an attractivity that is completely lost in modern racing, really, with its small, fuel saving, ecologically correct "cars". Thank God there's LMP... LMP? You mean the formula where the major constraint is the fuel characteristics of the engine?
  - exar0815 12y ago
    Yeah, but it at least gives a feeling of real prototype racing and constant evolution. And they look damn sexy, too. And when everything fails, I just watch VLN.
  - ericcumbee 12y ago
    Are you referring to the Equivalence of Energy and Equivalence of Technology regulations? If so that is a much more sane than regulating performance on the amount of oxygen the engine can consume. It's also much more relevant to production cars as well. To me Balance of Performance is a dirty word, but I am ok with having each technology balanced so each car has roughly the same amount of energy available to it.
gkanai 12y ago
Chris Harris on the Sport Quattro https://youtu.be/LDCE4FjVHOU?t=8m1s https://youtu.be/LDCE4FjVHOU?t=8m1s
- gkanai 12y ago
  1985 Pikes Peak Audi Quattro S1 Michèle Mouton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKKfzR7dX-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKKfzR7dX-c
tobltobs 12y ago
Some of the success of the Quadro should be attributed to the driver Walter Röhrl (and of course his copilot). Before he changed to the Audi Team, he did win lots of rallyes with an Opel Ascona 400, which was not exactly overpowered compared to the other rallye cars of this time.
georgeecollins 12y ago
An original Audi Quattro is very hard to find in th US and IMO very collectible.
brc 12y ago
While the Quattro has gone up in value, so has every other classic car worth buying, especially rare homologation specials. So it's not necessarily the market rediscovering the Quattro (which has never been 'lost') but QE money chasing hard collectibles.
simonebrunozzi 12y ago
Am I the first to mention how much I loved the Lancia Delta Integrale? Car of my dreams. My brother bought a Delta Integrale 1993 EVO in 1997 and kept it for a few years. I had the pleasure to drive it several times. What a beast.
- Ecio78 12y ago
  You are Italian, you can't not love Lancia Delta Integrale :D
Someone 12y ago
I know it is going on a tangential, but it surprised me to learn who the Stig (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_stig http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_stig) may be named after: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stig_Blomqvist http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stig_Blomqvist

80 points by Thevet 12y ago

Thank goodness it did. The things drivers can do with rally cars is amazing. By far my favorite sport to watch. I'm sad that it didn't really catch on in the USA. The format is unlike anything that would sell commercially here.

ekianjo 12y ago
It probably does not catch up there because you'd need a bunch of policemen to prevent spectators from being run over by cars losing control :)
hengheng 12y ago
In the days of YouTube celebs and Twitch, I can see a new future for rally spectating.
ifcho 12y ago
Actually, after the ban of the cars, the manufacturers looked for other races where they could use their monsters. They took them to Dakar, and to the famous Pikes Peak hillclimb race in the USA. Peugeot made a very good movie about it (although it is in a 405T16, which technically never raced group B, the car is basically a 205 T16 with another body shell) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEuZG37gFdM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEuZG37gFdM
- darklajid 12y ago
  I like the part at 3:30 where the driver has to drive with one hand to see anything.. Actually: Comparing that run to this one here [1] from the 'recent' past I'm even more impressed. Seems like the original video was awfully fast - and on a dirt road at that time? 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y20CLumT2Sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y20CLumT2Sg

makeitsuckless 12y ago

It also nearly killed the sport. Other manufacturers responded with Group B racing monsters of their own, like the Lancia Delta S4, which were high tech prototypes only thinly disguised as road cars. The result was exploding costs, exploding popularity (hundreds thousands of people lining the stages without the protection of normal circuit racing) and a series of deadly accidents, eventually leading to the end of the Group B category and a long decline in the sport's popularity.

hudibras 12y ago
>exploding popularity (hundreds thousands of people lining the stages without the protection of normal circuit racing) and a series of deadly accidents, eventually leading to the end of the Group B category I know next-to-nothing about rally racing, but that last photo in the article must highlight what you're talking about: a TV cameraman standing about six feet away from a speeding car on a dirt road. Yikes!
- Nr7 12y ago
  Actually more like this: http://www.motormavens.com/emAlbum/albums/Contributors/Patrick%20McCullagh/Webmining/_fullsize/BettegaPortugal1984.jpg http://www.motormavens.com/emAlbum/albums/Contributors/Patri... Portuguese rally fans especially were completely insane back then.
  - hudibras 12y ago
    O dear. If my calculations are correct, those guys in the street have around eight tenths of a second to get out of the way.
    - slayed0 12y ago
      Never tell me the odds
- astrobe_ 12y ago
  This guy is actually relatively safe, because he is in the "inside" of the turn. The most dangerous places are the "outsides" of turns, where cars out-of-control are more likely to go. I believe that it is a common security measure to place people on the insides rather than the outsides.

Nr7 12y ago

It was amazing what the drivers did with these Group B monsters in the mid 80s, considering how different of a sport rallying was back then. The cars were at best several hundreds of horsepowers more powerful than current wrc cars, with much inferior handling. Most cars, if any, didn't even have power steering back then. Also the races were much longer taking place over about 5 days compared to the 3 day events nowadays. One event had about 40-50 special stages back then when now there are about 15-25 and most of those are just the same stages repeated. In addition they used to drive both day and night while while getting only a few hours of sleep per night. I'm sure current rally races are still pretty grueling events, but those drivers in the 80s must have been superhuman. I'm still glad that things have changed. If they hadn't cancelled Group B the fatality count would have just increased. The cars were getting totally out of hand. Some rumors say that some prototype cars already built for the 87 season had close to 1000 horsepowers.

mauricemir 12y ago
I recall seeing and hearing a group B audi during a road transit stage - the sound of the engine crackling and poping as the driver drove slowly through town was amazing
- Nr7 12y ago
  That 5 cylinder engine makes such amazing sounds. I saw the Finnish rally legend Juha Kankkunen drive his own Sport Quattro S1 in a spectator event in Helsinki last summer. It completely blew my mind. :)
exDM69 12y ago
These cars were crazy difficult to drive, they had a "locked" four wheel drive system that is similar to an agricultural tractor so you have to slide the car around slow corners or the engine stalls (spectacular and noisy, but not really fast). They had an unsynchronized H-shifter gearbox that requires double declutching on downshifts and careful power application given the huge turbo boost. The driver has to be able to use the left and right foot for braking and be able to press all three pedals at once momentarily when downshifting under braking (left foot on the clutch, right foot toe on the brake and blipping the throttle with the outside of the foot, misleadingly called "heel'n'toe"). Here's a really good clip of Walter Röhrl putting an Audi Quattro through its paces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyVHj3sHVHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyVHj3sHVHQ

venomsnake 12y ago

Just by the title I knew it was Quattro ... such an amazing piece of engineering of the greatest VW generation ever ... that and Golf I&II gt redefined fun in cars.

venomsnake 12y ago

Just by the title I knew it was Quattro ... such an amazing piece of engineering of the greatest VW generation ever ... that and Golf I&II gt redefined fun in cars.

exar0815 12y ago

The article makes me really sad, but describes the best time in Rally sports. Group B cars made the rallye an event which had as much popularity as the formula 1. It was a time when Racing was 50% raw power and 50% talent, and it is no that it's major racing series, say Group B rally, Group C touring cars or the formula one gave birth to legends like Rohrl, Bellof or Senna. This is an attractivity that is completely lost in modern racing, really, with its small, fuel saving, ecologically correct "cars". Hell, it's racing, not a children's playground. Thank God there's LMP...

rodgerd 12y ago
> This is an attractivity that is completely lost in modern racing, really, with its small, fuel saving, ecologically correct "cars". Thank God there's LMP... LMP? You mean the formula where the major constraint is the fuel characteristics of the engine?
- exar0815 12y ago
  Yeah, but it at least gives a feeling of real prototype racing and constant evolution. And they look damn sexy, too. And when everything fails, I just watch VLN.
- ericcumbee 12y ago
  Are you referring to the Equivalence of Energy and Equivalence of Technology regulations? If so that is a much more sane than regulating performance on the amount of oxygen the engine can consume. It's also much more relevant to production cars as well. To me Balance of Performance is a dirty word, but I am ok with having each technology balanced so each car has roughly the same amount of energy available to it.

gkanai 12y ago

Chris Harris on the Sport Quattro https://youtu.be/LDCE4FjVHOU?t=8m1s https://youtu.be/LDCE4FjVHOU?t=8m1s

gkanai 12y ago
1985 Pikes Peak Audi Quattro S1 Michèle Mouton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKKfzR7dX-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKKfzR7dX-c

tobltobs 12y ago

Some of the success of the Quadro should be attributed to the driver Walter Röhrl (and of course his copilot). Before he changed to the Audi Team, he did win lots of rallyes with an Opel Ascona 400, which was not exactly overpowered compared to the other rallye cars of this time.

georgeecollins 12y ago

An original Audi Quattro is very hard to find in th US and IMO very collectible.

brc 12y ago

While the Quattro has gone up in value, so has every other classic car worth buying, especially rare homologation specials. So it's not necessarily the market rediscovering the Quattro (which has never been 'lost') but QE money chasing hard collectibles.

simonebrunozzi 12y ago

Am I the first to mention how much I loved the Lancia Delta Integrale? Car of my dreams. My brother bought a Delta Integrale 1993 EVO in 1997 and kept it for a few years. I had the pleasure to drive it several times. What a beast.

Ecio78 12y ago
You are Italian, you can't not love Lancia Delta Integrale :D

Someone 12y ago

I know it is going on a tangential, but it surprised me to learn who the Stig (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_stig http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_stig) may be named after: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stig_Blomqvist http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stig_Blomqvist