A friend offered me a drive in his 6R4. I politely declined explaining that I’d rather the cam belt didn’t snap with me at the wheel. The cam belt snapped shortly after. The 6R4 sums up the state of the British motor industry at the time: flawed in many respects.
Rallying is all but dead with not even a handfull of companies still prepared to invest. I enjoyed the heyday and the G4 Escort and Fiat Mirafiori duels were IMO the best of rallying before things got out of hand. My own cars were group N but Graham Hickman was good enough to let me out in “TUM”, a 220bhp G4 Escort – the fastest tractor ever made.