Kit Cars were a magnificent failure for the motorsport rule writers. You have to feel sorry for these people. Back in the day it seemed fairly obvious that rallying would be split between the more sadate mass produced saloon cars and the much faster limited edition sports cars, and the original Appendix J regulations were written accordingly. However, it took about ten minutes for the Works teams to figure out that if you just took the back seats out of their three-box-shaped saloon cars you could homologate a tasty rallying version whilst only building a few hundred. Ten years later the regulations attempted to create a class of moderately warmed over production cars to run behind the awesomely quick Group B cars which they called Group A. With Group B banned Group A became the main event. The Italians then got their best lawyers on the case and rocked up at the start of the 1987 Monte Carlo Rallye with a Lancia HF Turbo that was a lot more than just slightly warmed over. The rest is history.
By the early 1990s these Group A cars had evolved into serious machinery such as the Toyota Celica GT Turbo, the Ford Escort Cosworth and the Subaru Impreza that were even faster than the old Group B cars they were meant to have supported. On the World Rally circuit these cars provided incredibly close rallying. However, the price had increased even more than the performance, and on National events there were only ever a handful of such top range machines.
The sad fate of the British Rally Championship illustrates the problem. In the 1980s, as the British Open, it was the world's second rally series, a proving ground for future world champions where twenty or more top range cars battled it out in the forests and on the tarmac. By the 1990s though the fields were reduced to about five top Group A cars, and most of those would primarily be tackling the Irish Tarmac Championship.
Something had to be done, and that something was Formula Two. In the Seventies rally fans had swarmed by in their hundreds of thousands to watch two litre, two wheel drive, normally aspirated cars battle it out, and there was no reason to think they wouldn't do so again. The FIA launched the Two Litre World Championship in 1993. The next year it was won by Skoda using the little Favourit. This almost killed the championship as manufactures didn't mind spending millions to be beaten by the likes of Toyota or Subaru, but spending that money and being whipped by a 1.3 litre ex-communist car was not so good.
For 1994 the rules were changed to allow Kit Cars. These were still two litres and two wheel drive, but they allowed a lot more modification. This was no more than what most amateur drivers had been doing since rallying was invented, but Works teams weren't usually given such a free hand, for reasons that will become obvious.
The effect in the UK was immediate. Whilst the 1994 British Rally Championship had basically been decided as soon as Malcolm Wilson turned up with his Works Escort Cosworth, in 1995 five drivers went into the last round with a chance of winning it, with Alistair McRae just beating Gwyndaf Evans in a series that had five different winners in as many rounds. Then it all started to very wrong, or very right, depending on your point of view.
We can blame the French for this. Apart from being rallying mad, they have a national championship that is mostly tarmac. A heavy turbo Group A car was not necessarily the best for this. On the other hand a nice lightweight, high revving two wheel drive car would be perfect. So, the result was the Kit Cars started to get a bit exciting.
The French series now saw the likes of Jean Ragnotti in the Renaut Clio Maxi taking on Gilles Panizzi in the Peugeot 306 Maxi. These would soon be joined by cars from SEAT, Citroen, Suzuki, Ford, Hyundai, Nissan and Skoda. Formula Two had certainly brought back the works teams.
The Peugeot even had a cameo in the opening sequence of the film Taxi 2, where it is caught on stage by the titular Peugeot 406 taxi. Maybe a 405 T16 could have done this, but no 406 on Earth could have.
Kit Cars were eligible to enter World Rallies, and that's where they really showed what they could do. On the 1997 Tour de Corse only rain on the last day, which gave the four wheel drive cars an edge, stopped Gilles Panizzi beating Colin McRae. The World Rally Cars were hassled by Kit Cars on other tarmac rallies too, until in 1999 Philippe Bugalski beat them all and won both the Rally Catalunya and Tour de Corse.
This was all very exciting, but it couldn't last. It wasn't just that the WRC teams didn't like being beaten by National level competition, but the costs had now got competely out of control. Not only were these cars beyond the means of most privateers, but only three manufactures were still willing to stay in this arms race.
So, Formula Two was no more, gone the way of Group B. Thankfully, some of these magnificent cars still complete.
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