Group B Rally cars…..

I have saved this one for Friday as it’s a bit long, but what a watch for anyone interested. I must admit to not knowing a lot about Group B other than the cars that it left us, until i watched this, It conveys just how minmindbogglingly Batshit crazy it was.

Imagine the TDF crowd up Alp d’huez with formula one cars whizzing past at 100 MPH and you get the idea. Its amazing appeal was also its downfall. After watching this it is hard to see how they could have carried on with it.

A few other interesting things in the vid….The XJ 220 was built by jag to compete in Group B road racing against the likes of the Porsche 959, but the demise of the Group B rallying put paid to the road series as well.

Enjoy

and to finish with….Whats your favorite Group B car ?

Well if you had of asked me before watching this I would have said the Lancia S4 of course, but I think i have changed my mind

I give you the mental Peugeot 205 T16

RS200 would be mine. I never saw them in action at the WRC, but saw plenty at Rallycross circuits shortly after Group B was outlawed.

Lancia 037 of course…although that’s the least expected answer to the question I guess as people assume that Group B had to be 4wd…

Has to be the Metro.

From this 45hp

To this 400hp

Gotta love a good Group B rally car! Up there with the legendary status of Group C Le mans cars for me!

RS200 for me too, they’re just so naughty – pretty much Peak Group B – not based on any road car, no **** given ground up Rally Weapon, of course sadly killed spectators in crashes. The Race car was meant to be quicker 0-60 than an F1 car of the day and the Evo Road Car held the 0-60-0 for a road car for years and years, nothing could touch it.

The XJ200 link is a strange one, meant to be a Group B car, but it would have been a odd one – it would have been HUGE next the to Metros and 205s with massive over-hangs, not great for rallying, but who knows what it looked like when it was a Saturday afternoon project. Ironically when the recession came and they had to cut costs – they dropped the 4WD and the V12 – but it actually ended up with a Group B engine, sort of – it’s Turbo V6 engine started life in the Metro 6R4 (minus the Turbos).

I love Group B. I wish I was able to appreciate it when it was actually around. I became fascinated by it through a few years spent in the RS Owners Club. I love how bonkers they are.

If I has the money in my pocket it would be the RS200, and a homologation model of an rs200, 205 T16 or Audi Quattro would be very high up my lottery winning list of things to buy.

I’ll never forget the RSOC annual show at Silverstone when 50 odd rs200 were parked up next to each other.

The OPs video has been added to my watch later list. Cheers! Looks fantastic

The XJ220 was a Group B Sports Car, they were also done to the same rules for a short while.

S4 gets my vote, just completely bonkers! Turbocharged and supercharged with the drivers sat ON the fuel tank and the bodywork is only cosmetic

Not RS200! I’ve been in two – they felt like they’d been thrown together in Fords lunch break & both had alarming smell of petrol inside, the second one caught fire a few months after my ride.

Fave has to the S1 Quattro

This is good

And what about group S? Google Lancia ECV 800bhp 😯

Milky have you seen this

Can’t see what the problem was 😯

more here: https://www.carthrottle.com/post/these-incredible-gifs-show-why-group-b-was-the-ultimate-era-for-rally/%5B/url%5D

The world needs this sort of insanity back in it!

Can I have the Lancia please? With someone to maintain it though. A mate had one. It NEVER ran right, and was an absolute money-pit

Watching group B cars in FOD, was like being Pebble dashed at the same time as standing next to a 21 gun salute.

Bit of trivia for you. The rear lights and door handles on RS200s came from the Mk1 Sierra, it was a real parts bin special of a car.

Yeah but shocks…..!

The 205 T16 has to be my favourite Group B. My mum had a bog standard 205 when i was a kid and it was mindblowing as a youngster to see something that looked similar blatting round a forest at that speed.

Also had a big soft spot for the 405 T16 rally raid too. Had a toy version of that picked up in france that was my favourite toy

Yellow one? I had that too!

I remember watching a round of the RAC at Sutton Park – 20,000 plus spectators. The time span from seeing them come round the corner to the car passing didn’t seem possible. The Audi’s seemed fast until the Peugeots came through. Felt like we could touch the cars as they went past. Such an experience.

My favourite was also the Peugeot 205T16 – I saw them for real in Sutton Park Birmingham – about 1985’ish.

The …door handles on RS200s came from the Mk1 Sierra

It was the whole door, modified a bit, that came from a Sierra 😆

I assume the original vid is the BBC documentary that reappears on BBC4 every now and again(?)

The Delta S4 that Henri Toivonen died in was insane. As above, the bodywork was a few kg of eggshell, the speed and power phenomenal and the crew sat on top of the lightweight fuel tanks.

Add in laissez-faire race organisation and safety, but mostly just nuts spectators and you have a recipe for certain disaster. Wasn’t it the Portuguese spectators who were the most bonkers? I seem to remember that a fair number of them stood on the outside of corner exits trying to touch the cars 8O. Some of those same people are on the film lamenting the lives lost – absolutely nuts.

A very exciting time in Rallying, saw them on the RAC a couple of times.
My favourite was the British underdog MG Metro 6R4, there are two at the Gaydon motor museum, the Williams Grand Prix Engineering prototype would make a great street sleeper it look so much like a ordinary MG Metro.
After Group B ended, some of the unsold Clubman spec 6R4’s were converted to road cars, trim and sound deadening etc added, a friend of mine encountered one, managed to keep it in sight until the road got a bit wiggley, it then disappeared very quickly indeed.

The Delta S4 that Henri Toivonen died in was insane. As above, the bodywork was a few kg of eggshell, the speed and power phenomenal and the crew sat on top of the lightweight fuel tanks.

and (allegedly) nitrous hidden in a dummy fire extinguisher. Which also wouldn’t have helped in his crash and the subsequent fire.

This is my brother’s car:

http://www.youngtimercars.co.uk/2013/08/renault-5-turbo/

Wasn’t it the Portuguese spectators who were the most bonkers?

They were barking mad, though I did once hear that on the Circuit of Ireland the organisers used to plant wellies in concrete alongside the stage the day before, then plant Irishmen in them for the stage.

Best car? Lots of very pretty ones but for me the sheer brutality of the Quattro Sport sums up the era. Personally I preferred Group 4.

Don’t forget the ferrari 308 gtb rally car.

Got to be an RS200 though, that beehive dumpvalve is an aural delight

Nice Eksay

righog – hadn’t seen that, he’s one very lucky bloke 😯

After Group B ended, some of the unsold Clubman spec 6R4’s were converted to road cars, trim and sound deadening etc added, a friend of mine encountered one, managed to keep it in sight until the road got a bit wiggley, it then disappeared very quickly indeed.

I’ve been a passenger in one, very surreal experience looking at a Metro dash etc but doing supercar speeds 😯

bigyinn – Member

Bit of trivia for you. The rear lights and door handles on RS200s came from the Mk1 Sierra, it was a real parts bin special of a car.

The McLaren F1 has the rear lights from a Bus and door mirrors from a VW – “parts bin special” it is not.

Truth is, designing and homologating switchgear and trim parts costs a fortune, if you’re designing a hatchback that going to be made in the millions it doesn’t really matter – R&D cost is divided by each unit, so comes to pennies an item if you’re building 200 cars it’s a huge cost so there’s a very long tradition of very expensive, very exclusive cars using little bits and bobs from mainstream vehicles.

The list is endless – Aston’s used to be full of ford bits, now they’re full of Volvo bits, their V8s are modified Ford engines that were originally designed for a Volvo. Ferraris are full Fiat bits, Pagani might be very proud of their partnership with Mercedes AMG for it’s engines, but I doubt they’re so keen to talk about their Rover 200 Climate Control, the fancy Key for the Veyron that can be used to change the way it drives is apart from a nice cover the same one you get for a Polo.

Yeah the RS200 probably feels shady as **** to sit in, but a lot of low volume cars do – especially back then. They don’t exactly advertise it, but it’s a lot easier to design a very expensive, fast car, than it is a cheap (relatively) everyday one. If Ford spent a couple of years and millions of pounds to develop Door Handles and Windscreens (another Sierra bit) for a race car, you’d question their sanity.

Mr. Ferrari 488GTB owner might feel very smug sat at the lights next to Mr. Fiesta 1.0 Ecoboost but the Ford would have cost many multiples more to design, like staggering amounts more and is in 95% of tangible, practical ways the better car.

Mr. Ferrari 488GTB owner might feel very smug sat at the lights next to Mr. Fiesta 1.0 Ecoboost but the Ford would have cost many multiples more to design, like staggering amounts more and is in 95% of tangible, practical ways the better car.

Whilst I get the sentiment, I don’t entirely agree with that. My brother and his girlfriend (along with someone who posts on here) work for a large research and engineering ‘company’ that does an awful lot of work for a super car company. The volume of work in just the tub alone is mind boggling. Maybe Ferrari’s of old might fit the above statement but the newer stuff is leaps and bounds ahead of Ford and such.

I sometimes wonder what the cars would be like now if group B had continued.

Makes parts of me tingle……

Righog – he had a 6R4 before that, he took me for a spin in it one day. It was like being in a supercharged tractor, it was a bloody noisy thing. Whenever he drove it at Castle Combe he had to put mufflers on the exhaust because it failed the sound levels!

The bloke he sold it to put it in a ditch the day he bought it!!

I think he bought both of them from John price (he normally has some nice toys on sale).

Whilst I get the sentiment, I don’t entirely agree with that. My brother and his girlfriend (along with someone who posts on here) work for a large research and engineering ‘company’ that does an awful lot of work for a super car company. The volume of work in just the tub alone is mind boggling. Maybe Ferrari’s of old might fit the above statement but the newer stuff is leaps and bounds ahead of Ford and such.

I not saying they’re simple, far far from. It’s just that it’s cheaper to design a car that costs a lot of money to buy and isn’t expected to be as reliable or long lasting.

Ferrari are obviously pretty shy about sales figures – they sell a lot more cars than they’d like buyers to think, but it’s estimated they sold 16,000 to 18,000 458s – the predecessor to the 488. They cost about £150k before taxes, so their total revenue from that model was 2.7Bn, give or take. That’s £2.7bn to design, build, ship, market and sell those cars. Aside from maybe the 360 to the 430 Ferrari’s are usually “all new”.

By contrast, when Ford needed to design an “all new” medium sized saloon (the Mondeo here, but it was sold under other brands / names abroad) it spent £5bn on the design alone and that was in 1990! Admittedly a lot of that was spend to devise cheaper ways to mass produce it which meant savings later on and it’s been through several revisions since which built on that original investment.

zanelad – Member
I sometimes wonder what the cars would be like now if group B had continued.

Makes parts of me tingle……

Watch what happens when the Rally Cross guys get hold of this years WRC cars, reckon it’ll be pretty close

Dunno if this will work a scanned photo taken by me, signed by Jonathan Palmer doing rallycross at Brands c.1985
CRB153 by I'm Not The Alien[/url], on Flickr

Always had a soft spot for the Opel Ascona 400

I saw the Group B’s on the RAC, and then the following year their replacement.

I was so that disappointed the second year, it took another 30 years before I went to see another rally stage 🙂

And there’s been a 6R4 here for the last couple of years, along with everything from WRC’s to Mk1 Escorts:

http://www.bordercountiesrally.co.uk/

Off-road stages, including the MTB locations of Innerleithen and Yair, quick gravel with lots of up/down – March 18th/

Eskay- your brother’s Renault 5 Turbo must be worth an absolute fortune!
I was looking at some standard road ones the other day and they seemed to be around the £85k mark!

Oh and I’ll have anything Lancia please, especially the Stratos in Alitalia livery.

I used to love the look of the group B back in the 80’s

There was a guy called Stephen Timm whos family had a Ford dealership in Leigh and his everyday vehicle was a red RS200.