After a disappointing debut season in 1982, the Lancia 037 came good in 1983 by winning that year’s Driver and Manufacturer World Rally Championship titles. The rear-wheel drive 037’s state-of-art…
Read MorePeugeot produced the 205 T16 with the sole intention of delivering Driver and Manufacturer titles in the World Rally Championship. At the time, rallying was even more popular than Formula 1 with huge…
Read MoreBetween 1974 and 1976, the Lancia Stratos established itself as among the most successful rally cars of all time winning three Manufacturers’ titles for the Turin-based firm. However, ahead of the 1977…
Read MoreAs more and more manufacturers piled into rallying following the introduction of Group B regulations for 1982, the new generation of purpose-built machinery led to an explosion in media…
Read MoreAlthough the gen. three Celica TCT was fairly conventional by the super specialised nature of most Group B creations, its toughness and reliability helped Toyota to half-a-dozen WRC wins on the…
Read MoreFollowing three wins from its final three WRC outings of 1984, Peugeot’s 205 T16 look the car to beat heading into the 1985 season; Lancia’s replacement for the ageing rear-drive 037 was not expected…
Read MorePeugeot’s 1984 World Rally Championship programme kicked off at the French manufacturer’s home event: the Tour de Corse in early May. Although the T16 had been homologated a month earlier (on…
Read MoreAfter Audi became the 1982 World Rally champions with their four-wheel drive Quattro, the writing was on the wall for traditional two-wheel drive machinery. Although Lancia’s trick 037 Group B…
Read MoreAfter several months of rally accidents, things came to a head with a grim burst of fatalities in the spring of 1986. As a result, the FIA announced Group B cars would be banned from the beginning of…
Read MoreA major contributing factor to the incredible pace with which Group B machinery developed between 1982 and 1986 was the Evolution rule. Evolution variants enabled manufacturers to…
Read MoreAlthough rallying had been in rude health throughout the 1970s, for the second half of the decade, sports car racing was in the doldrums. To help stimulate a revival, a new simplified regularity…
Read MoreAt the end of 1979, Ford officially withdrew from rallying. They did so as Manufacturers’ champions having beating Datsun by 14 points. Ford’s Bjorn Waldegaard also took that year’s Drivers’ crown in…
Read MoreBy the early 1980s, Fiat knew that for their domination of World and European rallying to continue, an all-new challenger conforming to the latest Group B regulations would have to be produced.
Read MoreToyota first started to compete in top flight rallying during the early 1970s when the firm began a long-term association with Swedish driver, Ove Andersson. In 1975, Andersson’s rallying operation…
Read MoreGroup B regulations permitted manufacturers in possession of homologated machinery to produce further uprated batches of 20 Evolution variants every twelve months. The T16 Evolution 1…
Read MoreBetween 1987 and late 1989, the Delta HF Turbo 4WD and its successor, the HF Integrale, cleaned up on the World and European rally stage. Going into the 1990 season, Lancia were obviously keen to…
Read MoreAlthough Lancia convincingly won the 1987 World Rally Championship with their Delta HF Turbo 4WD, the car had been developed before the FIA announced their 1987 ban on Group B cars.
Read MoreWhen the Lancia Delta was launched at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 1979, no-one could have predicted this boxy five-door hatchback would go on to become the most successful rally car…
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