The Ford Fiesta in rallying and rallycross

Yesterday the last Ford Fiesta rolled off the production line in Cologne, so it's perhaps a good time to reflect on the car's use in rallying and rallycross. This is very much a story of two halves, with a huge gap in between, and it's fairly easily told.

The Fiesta launched in 1976 as part of a new generation of front wheel drive 'superminis'. But whilst it's rival and contemporary the VW Golf was already a hot hatch (although not yet imported into the UK), Ford only produced the boring versions of the car for several years.

Things started to change on the 1979 Monte Carlo rally. Two specially prepared Fiesta ran in Group 2, driven by future world champion Ari Vatanen and a rather frustrated Roger Clark. They were the support act to Ford's attempt to win the event with a pair of seriously hot Group 4 Escorts for Hannu Mikkola and Bjorn Waldegard. An overall win was prevented by the French police and French spectators respectively, but the Fiestas did well enough, easily beating a pair of Fiat Ritmos, the car that was sold in the UK as a Strada, driven by Per Eklund and Antonio Bettega. Vatanen came a respectable ninth, but it was Jean Ragnotti's pocket rocket Renault 5 Alpine won Group 2.

It was a decent result in the circumstances, but Ford it seemed had greater expectation. Having thrown a lot of money at the Fiesta project they then let it die, and that was basically that for the cat at the top level of rallying. Some of the special bits and bobs from the rally car, including the tuned Kent engine, made their way into the XR2, which was the starter hot hatch for a whole generation of boy racers.

It was a different story in rallycross though. The division of the British series into under and over 1.6 litre categories meant the car was perfectly placed to eclipse the Mini as the top vehicle in the smaller class. In 1981 a very special space-framed works Metro gave them a hard time, but despite that the Fiesta cleaned up. What was under the bonnet was usually a BDA and not a breathed on Kent, and in the hands of Trevor Hopkins and Keith Ripp they not only took class but championship honours in 1981, 1982 and 1983.

By then four wheel drive and turbo charging had arrived in rallycross and the days of rear wheel drive Escorts mixing it with front wheel drive Minis and Fiestas were over. In rallying Ford abandoned the RS1700T project for the RS200, which in turn had to be abandoned when Group B died and they had to try to make the two wheel drive Sierra Cosworth a winner. This was followed by the Escort Cosworth and Focus RS, which were both amazing cars, although neither was ultimately as successful as they should have beeen. All those vehicles, except the RS1700T, made it into rallycross, where they were outright winners, whilst the Fiesta remained the preserve of the odd privateer.

All this changed in 2011, when rallying rewrote the rules and 1.6 litre turbos became the norm. The Focus was retired and the Fiesta, now on its sixth iteration, became the main Ford rallying machine. The Fiesta ST had been completing in Group N, and its own one make series, and Malcolm Wilson's M Sport had produced a championship winning Super 2000 car, but now the Fiesta moved up to the next level with the Fiesta RS WRC.

Everything started well with a 1-2-3 on the opening round of the 2011 season in Sweden, but after that it was all downhill. There were also wins in Australia and Wales, but once again the championship went to Loeb and Citroen. In 2012 there were wins in Sweden, Portugal and Wales, but it was again the French championship winning combination was unbeatable, this time by a country mile, and Ford pulled the plug. This was probably wise as VW were about to rain on everyone's picnic. In 2013 Fiestas were still popular cars, but there were no more wins.

In 2017 the rules were reworked again and wings came back. M Sport went to work again, this time turning the Mark 7 Fiesta in the Fiesta WRC. With Ford money behind them and reigning world champion Sebastien Ogier behind the wheel the Fiesta finally had a shot at the top spot. Again it started well, with wins in Monte Carlo for Ogier and Sweden for Jan Mari Latvala. Then Thierry Neuville and Hyundai fought back and the championship caught alight. It was all decided on Wales Rally GB. Elfyn Evans took a very popular home win in the Fiesta, ahead of Neuville in his Hyundai, who'd recovered from visiting a ditch on the first day. Third was Ogier in his Fiesta, which gave the blue oval it's first world championship since Ari Vatanen in 1981.

2018 was more of the same. Ogier and Neuville swapped wins until the final round in Australia, where the Hyundai hit a tree and gave Ogier his sixth world championship. For 2019 though Ogier went back to Citroen, Wilson stepped down as M Sport boss and Ford were winless and came fourth in the manufacturers championship. Ford were again winless in the Covid affected 2020 and 2021 championships, but in 2023 they signed Sebastien Loed and 43 years after Vatanen had pedalled his Mark 1 Fiesta to ninth, Loeb won the Monte Carlo in his. That was the car's only win of the year though and at the end of the season the Fiesta was retired and replaced by the Puma.

Whilst all this had been going on rallycross had hit the big time with the launch of the FIA World Rallycross Championship in 2014. Amongst the wide variety of cars that started that debut season were Fiesta STs for Andreas Bakkerud, Reinis Nitiss and Bohdan Ludwiczak. WRX provided great entertainment straight out of the box and wins were shared amongst four different teams. Bakkerud won at Lydden Hill and in Turkey, whilst Nitiss won in Norway and scored consistently enough to come third in the championship.

For 2015 there were seven drivers in Fiestas. Only Bakkerud managed a win, but consistent performances by him and Nitiss secured their team second place overall. For 2016 and 2017 Bakkerud joined Ken Block's Hoonigan team, which moved back to driving Focuses. There were still Fiestas entered, but they rarely troubled the top order after that.

The Fiesta still soldiered on at a national level though. In the UK, for example, Fiestas driven by Pat Doran and Julian Godfrey won every year from 2009 to 2015. In 2019 it was Godfrey again and in 2021 Derek Tohill in his Fiesta. Then in 2022 Patrick O'Donovan slipped and slided from last place to win the final of the 2022 Five Nationals Championship at Lydden Hill in his Fiesta. 

POD swapped to a Peugeot for his attempt at the 2023 European Rallycross Championship, although as I write the championship leader is Anton Markland in a Fiesta. However, with production now at an end, the Puma Ford's main car on the rally stages, this could well be the Fiesta's swan song. It's a pretty unusual record, and nobody younger than me remembers both halves of it, but the car has its place in rallying and rallycross history. 

Obituary: Hannu Mikkola

Hannu Mikkola, who died this week, was one of the original 'Flying Finns'. He was already a famous driver when the World Rally Championship began in 1973 having started out, as so many Finns of the time did, thrashing a Volvo PV544 through the trees of his home country, but he had gained worldwide fame by winning the 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally and the 1972 East African Safari in Ford Escorts.

Those of us in Britain who remember him in the late seventies in the Mark Two Escort often forget that in between he had quite a vagabond career. He drove Peugeots in Africa in 1973 and 1974, he was part of the Fiat Works team for the first half of 1975 and then drove Toyotas for the next two and a half years. He had a lot of success during this period too. In 1975 he came second to Munari's Stratos on the Monte Carlo in a Fiat 124 Abarth, before winning in Morocco in a Peugeot 504 and giving the Group 4 Toyota Corolla its one and only win on the 1000 Lakes. There was no World Championship for Drivers then, but if you retrospectively use the original points system, he would have won it.

British fans though mainly remember him for his performances on the cold, wet and often snowy RAC Rally. In 1977 he drove a Toyota Celica and gave the all-conquering Ford Escort a run for its money with an impressive second place. The next year he was in an Escort himself, the iconic blue Eaton Yale car. He was expected to follow Bjorn Waldegard home again, but instead Mikkola proved to be the master, and once the 'Micky Mouse' stages were over he overhauled Alen's Stratos and won by five minutes, which also gave him the 1978 British Open Rally Championship.

The next year was the first year of the Driver's Championship and Ford put in an all out effort. It was soon clear that the Ford drivers were mainly competing against each other. Mikkola and Waldegarde had an epic tussle on the special stages in their Escorts, before switching to Mercedes 450s for the African rounds. Mikkola won in Portugal, New Zealand and Great Britain, but two wins and a string of second places put Waldegard ahead on points. It was all to play for in the final round on the Ivory Coast but, although Mikkola's Mercedes won the event, Waldegard's second place was enough to make him champion.

Ford's sabbatical to develop a new car left Mikkola without a full works drive. He continued to use the Mercedes in Africa and had an Escort drive for David Richards in Europe. Had he not had international commitments he would probably have won the British Open Rally Championship that year. However, his main achievement in 1980 was in helping to make the Audi Quattro a rally winner. 

Mikkola's signing for the German team had caused some mirth amongst his fellow drivers. Audi were known for big, heavy, underpowered saloons. Even those who had heard of their four wheel drive project regarded it as a novelty act, unlikely to be any more competitive than the Land Rovers that appeared on some British rounds. Little did the sceptics know that Mikkola was helping to usher in a new era of rallying. 

Mikkola was back in the blue Escort as he tried to complete his RAC hat trick, but he was to discover that whilst Ford had been absent from top level rallying, the opposition had caught up. He blamed a minor off on the different driving style he'd had to learn for the Audi, but in the end the decisive factor was tires. Mikkola's Dunlops were no match for Henri Toivonen's Michelins, and the Ford came second, breaking up what would otherwise have been a Talbot one-two-three. 

In 1980 Mikkola had run the Quattro as the course car on the French Mille Pistes rally and had put in times that were comfortably faster than the actual winner. On the 1981 Monte Carlo Rally the car had its WRC debut. After six stages Mikkola was six minutes ahead, having overtaken previous winner Jean Pierre Nicholas's Porsche on one snowy stage. The car proved less devastating on the tarmac, and ended up hitting a bridge, but its potential was clear. Mikkola gave the Quattro its maiden win on the very next rally in Sweden, but mechanical failure, a fire and an exclusion marred the rest of the car's debut season. The season ended though with another win for Mikkola on the RAC. 

Audi had a full-on assault on the championship in 1982, but a poor start to the season meant that Mikkola ended up playing a supporting role to teammate Michelle Mouton as she vied with Opel's Walter Rohrl for the Drivers title. Mouton lost, but Audi comfortably won the Makes cup and Mikkola again won the RAC. The next season was the start of Group B rallying and Mikkola was Audi's star driver as they took on Lancia in one of the all-time great WRC duels. The Italians beat the Germans to the Makes championship, but Mikkola finally won a much deserved World Championship for Drivers. On the 1983 RAC Rally Mikkola was again in with a chance of a hat trick. However, on the Knowsley Safari Park 'Mickey Mouse' stage a tree stump took out a front wheel and Mikkola ended up completing the stage with co-driver Arne Hertz sat on the book. Victory went instead to teammate Stig Blomqvist, but Mikkola still finished second. 

Blomqvist was Audi's lead driver for the 1984 season, although Mikkola still won in Portugal. By the end of the year though it was clear that the Quattro had finally met its match, in the form of the white Peugeot 205T16. 1985 was billed as a battle royal between the nimble Peugeot and the more experienced Audi team, but in the end the French blew the Germans out of the water and Mikkola didn't win a World rally for the first time since 1977. By 1986 Lancia, Ford and British Leyland had all joined the Group B battle. The Quattro had shrunk, grown wings and had so much power it literally spat flames, but was struggling to complete with better balanced machinery. After the tragedy of Portugal Audi dropped out of world rallying.

Mikkola had continued to enter British Open rounds during his Quattro years. Only his international commitments, and the car's poor tarmac performance, stopped him winning a second title. In 1986 he won the National Breakdown Rally, which was what the De Lacy Motor Club's event was calling itself that year, and Welsh International before Audi pulled the plug, giving the Quattro it's last significant rally win in the process.

With Group B gone there top drivers faced a struggle to find competitive drives. Mikkola ended up with Mazda, whose 323 lacked the power of the Lancia Deltas, and which could only win in conditions where traction was more important than power. The snowy 1988 RAC Rally was one such rally, and after carnage at the top of the field Mikkola found himself leading the rally. With only five stages to go he came over a crest in Langdale, was blinded by the low sun, and left the road. As he tried to rejoin the rally the Mazda's transmission snapped and it was all over. Mikkola continued with the Japanese team for three more seasons but was unable to add to his tally of eighteen world championship wins.

The Lombard RAC Rally became the Network Q and eventually got stuck in Wales. But in 2004 the De Lacy Motor Club decided to revise the rally's old format for two wheel drive cars and called it the Roger Albert Clark Rally. As well as old cars, they managed to bring some old drivers, and Mikkola joined old rivals Stig Blomqvist and Malcolm Wilson for a trash through the Yorkshire, Cumbrian and Northumbrian stages in Ford Escort RSs. For us more mature fans it was a chance to enjoy the sight, sound and smells of the old Group 4 days. Mikkola won five stages and came fifth, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that the master was back, in an Escort, and in Kielder Forest. For British rally fans this was rallying heaven. We miss those days and we will miss Hannu Mikkola. 

Obituary: Russell Brookes

Russell Brookes, who died on 30 October 2019, was one of the great characters of British rallying.

His career was a curious one, spanning as it does the years in which British drivers failed to make much of an impression on the world rallying scene, but also the greatest years of the British Open Rally Championship, when the best drivers in the world came to the British Isles to take on the home drivers, and often as not lost to them. Outside of Britain Brookes' best result on a World Rally Championship event was sixth. On home ground though he took on, and at some stage beat, Bjorn Waldegard, Walter Rohrl, Ari Vatanen, Hannu Mikkola, Stig Blomqvist, Timo Salonen and Colin McRae, all future World Rally Champions.

Between Roger Clark's victory on the 1976 RAC Rally, to Colin McRae's on the 1993 Rally of New

Zealand, no British driver won a round of the World Rally Championship. These were British rallying's wilderness years, when our national series was a ghetto which drivers were unable to escape from. These were also, pretty much, the years of Brookes's rallying career. In his first full season in the British national rally championship he was dicing with Clark, and in his last with McRae.

Brookes joined British rallying top division in 1976 in his distinctively liveried Andrews Heat for
Hire Ford Escort RS1800. As a young driver who was quick, a bit too quick, and he had to crash his way down to a pace in which he could finish a rally However, he immediately made his mark as by being quicker than the great Roger Clark.

The next year he won the British Rally Championship, after a tremendous dice around the stages with Penti Airikkala in the Vauxhall Chevette RS2300. He also got a drive on a World rally, with Ford sending him to Corsica in an attempt to beat Fiat to the world title. He retired with mechanical failure, but managed third on that years Lombard RAC Rally, gaining a prestigious A seeding for the 1978 season.

The next year the British National Rally Championship became the British Open, and the rest of the world started to take notice. As well as Penti, the British resident Finn, Finnish aces Hannu Mikkola, Markku Alen and Kyosti Hamalainen came over to take on the British boys. They did not have an easy time of it. Brookes won the Circuit of Ireland and then, on the Argyll based Burmah International, he ended up on exactly the same overall time as Hannu Mikkola. This was the first international rally ever to end in a tie, and as cars are now timed to the thousandth of the second this is a record that will stand forever. On that year's RAC Rally Brookes came third to retain his A seeding and complete a Ford hat trick.

The 1979 Open was just as competitive. Brookes won the Scottish, after a long duel with one Jimmy McRae. Airikkale won the series, but the Brookes and McRae battle was the shape of things to come. On the RAC Rally that year Brookes did one better than the previous year and he finished second, with four future World Champions behind him (five if you could Markku Alen). His career was on a high and the future looked bright. Surely a drive at World level beckoned?

Alas, it was not so. Ford retired from rallying to develop a replacement for the venerable Escort RS.
They only expected to be gone for a year or so, but ended up being out of top level competition for nearly six years. All the Ford drivers had to find other teams, and Brookes chose Talbot, whose Sunbeam Lotus had shown promise at the hands of Tony Pond in the previous year's Open, It was a bad choice.

Talbot would win the 1981 World Rally Championship with Henri Toivonen and Guy Frequeline, but Brookes was left with nly an underpowered car and British Open events. Fourth place on the 1980 RAC was his only memorable result with the car.

For the 1982 season Brookes signed up for Vauxhall. The HS had become the HSR, and one of the best two wheel drive rally cars ever, at least on British events.

Unfortunately for Brookes this was the year the Audi Quattro arrived on the British Open. Every British Open rally entered by a Works Quattro was won by a Quattro, leaving Brookes and the rest of the two wheel drive contingent fighting for second place. The tarmac rounds were another matter though, and here Brookes and McRae resumed their old rivalry. In 1982 McRae had the edge and won the Open, but in 1983 Brookes beat the Scot and wold have won the series too, had not the following year's World Champion, Stig Blomqvist, beaten them both in his Quattro.

For 1984 the Chevette finally followed the Escort into retirement and Brookes embrace Group B with the Open Manta 400, still sporting Andrews sponsorship. He was now McRae's team mate and the two of them had another epic dice. Although it never won a World event, the Manta 400 was the perfect car for the British Open's almost equal mix of tarmac and gravel. The Quattros won in the forests, but in the championship it was McRae from Brookes.

The following year though Brookes would have his revenge. He was runner up to Mikkola's Quattro in Yorkshire and then had to gift a win in Ireland to McRae's on team orders. He retired in Wales and was third in Scotland before blasting the Opel to a win on the tarmac of Ulster. This put him level on points with McRae going into the last round on the Isle of Man. It was an epic duel. Malcolm Wilson blew his chances by crashing his Quattro, so it came down to a straight fight between the old rivals in their Mantas. This time the rally, and the championship, went to Brookes.

Brookes clearly wasn't going to quit on a car that had given him his second championship. However, in 1986 Group B finally arrived on mass. In a packed field of Metro 6R4s and Quattros, a Peugeot 205T16, a Sport Quattro and an RS200 (which won) the old two wheel drive car was completely out gunned. For 1987 though everything changed. Group B was banned from European and World rallies, and four wheel drive Group B cars from everything. The result was a confusing series in which Brookes drove is Manta 400 on rounds that were only part of the British Open, but had to switch to a Group A Opel Kadett GSi for rounds that were also in the European Championship. Brookes won again in Ireland in the Manta, but there was no way the little Kadett could take on the Ford Sierra Cosworth, which now dominated Group A, and Brookes had a disappointing season. The following year though Brookes was able to transfer his Andrews Heat for Hire colours onto his own Cossie. He wasn't in time to enter the full season, but it was a useful learning experience and he was well placed to battle McRae again for the title in 1989.

Time though was marching on, and Brookes once again found himself with old technology. The Toyota Celica GT4 had arrived, combining four wheel drive traction, with turbo charged power and, thanks to its viscous coupling differential, two wheel drive handling. In the hands of Dai Lewellin it dominated the gravel rounds, but was no pushover on the tarmac either. There were also new drivers on the scene. One Gwyndaff Evans managed to beat Brookes on the Ulster, after the English driver's turbo cut out on the last stage, and there was a new McRae on the scene too. Colin had written off his Group N Cossie by crashing it into the rock I was standing on in Wales (that is completely true, my friend Simon still has the car's whale-tail), but for the last round of the championship he was promoted to Group A and proved faster than his dad.

This was the gravel Audi Sport Rally in mid Wales, the final round of the series. Brookes had had a solid season. The only time he'd failed to make the podium was in Scotland, when a last stage engine problem dropped him to fourth. On the Manx he'd been trailing Mark Lovell in the other Andrews Sierra, but team orders gave him the win. Brookes was slightly ahead of Llewellin on points, but the Toyota driver was favorite to win the gravel event. Brookes drove like he hadn't driven since his Escort days, pushing the big Sierra to the limit. He matched Llewelling for pace, but it couldn't last. He went off and lost four minutes, handing Llewellin the rally and the championship. The Welshman afterwards quipped "I guess there weren't many Welsh spectators to push Russell back when he went off."

In 1990 it all started to change. Andrews Heat for Hire ended their sponsorship and Brookes had to
scrabble around to get the money together to enter the series. Llewellin won again and Brookes had a disappointing year.

1991 though finally saw Brookes in four wheel drive machinery. He had an oversized Ford Sapphire Cosworth whilst Colin McRae had an oversized Subaru Legacy. The result was another epic Brookes/McRae duel around the British Isles. Brookes beat McRae in Wales when the Scot stuffed the Legacy into the scenery, but the other rallies were a lot closer. In Scotland Colin took the lead, but Brookes set five fastest stage times in a row and was hauling him in until a driveshaft broke. Brookes finished second to Colin, but did manage to stay ahead of old rival Jimmy. Brookes sat out the Circuit of Ireland, was ill during the Ulster, and couldn't match the pace of the future World Champion in Wales or on the Isle of Man. This meant McRae entered the last round only needing a points finish. Brookes finished second but McRae's third was enough to make him British Champion. At the end of the season Brookes retired.

In retirement Brookes became a star of the British historic rally scene. Like many who'd only seen him flashing through the trees, this was finally a time to meet him and hear him speak. Always charming, he had enough stories to entertain at any event he attended.

His adventures in the Paris-Dakar rally being a staple of such events. In the days when the event was still held in the African desert he drove a service barge one year. Sleeping whilst the driver was at the wheel, he was woken by the on-board mechanic. His hard drinking and chain smoking co-driver had suffered a heart attack at the wheel, his foot still jammed on the accelerator. After bringing the vehicle to a stop Brookes revived the man with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, not a pleasant experience, but an imminent sand storm meant the medical helicopter couldn't fly, so they had to drive him to the next bivouac. This they did with the unconscious co-driver strapped into his seat, a drive shaft stuck down the back of his overalls and taped to his helmet to stop his head flopping around.

It's sad that we won't be hearing any of these stories again. I last saw Brookes at the 2019 Race retro at Stoneleigh Park. He was racing around on his mobility scooter whilst there were no less than three replica Andrews Heat for Hire cars on display, which I think this shows the impact he had on British rallying. He will be missed.

Electric Rallycross

Is one of the world’s top motorsport series about to go electric? Quite possibly, and we’re not talking Scalextric here, but real motorsport. This is going to be big news, or at least it will be if it happens. This is the story.

The FIA, which stands for International Automobile Federation, only in French, currently licenses four motorsport world championships. These are Formula One, Rallying, Endurance Cars and the World Rallycross Championship. The Americans may dispute this, but these four series are the pinnacle of motorsport. And guess what? One of them, Rallycross, has announced it’s to go electric. All electric. They’re not just going to allow electric cars, like several other series are doing so, nor are they going to run a parallel series, like Formula E, but the whole series is to go electric. If all goes to plan, when the cars line up for the start of the first race of the 2021 World RX Championship, every single one will be an EV.

So how did we get here? Well, rallycross was a British invention, making it one of the few branches of motorsport that was not initially in French. It is a cross between rallying and circuit racing. Cars would race together round a short circuit that was half tarmac and half gravel. The inaugural event was at Lydden Hill in Kent in 1967 and was shown on World of Sport.

That the first event was televised was no coincidence. Rallycross was pretty much designed to make

it watchable. Formula One costs a fortune and nobody overtakes, rallying takes place in the middle of nowhere and endurance racing goes on forever. With rallycross though you can sit yourself down in the grandstand and watch every moment of a day of close racing. As in rallying, the cars look like ordinary cars, but they are four-wheel drive, turbocharged and very, very fast. An event consists of a number of races. Each race lasts no more than five minutes so they’re short enough to be shared in an email. To spice things up a bit more a recent innovation is the Joker Lap, which adds a bit of tactics to the mix.

Rallycross was a staple of Saturday TV when I was growing up in the seventies and my first Scalextric Set that I would was called the Mini Rallycross. However, outside of my bedroom, rallycross in the UK never quite made it to the first tier of motorsport. There was a European Championship, but the only people who took it seriously were the Scandinavians. However, all that changed in 2014, when the FIA made rallycross the fourth of its world series. Big names from the world of rallying and racing signed up and the car manufacturers chipped in money and expertise. World RX was off the starting line and quickly became the most exciting motorsport on the planet.

None of that is likely to get the average Greenpeacer too excited though. However, the news that came out at the start of last year might: rallycross would go all electric in 2020. This was a major announcement. It meant that every single rallycross car currently being used would be obsolete. Everyone would need new vehicles. Although it’s the teams with manufacturer backing that usually win the races, most of the field in rallycross is smaller, private teams. They would be allowed to make their own electric cars, but realistically they’d be looking to buy them. The FIA therefore needed to know that there were enough manufacturers interested both to make sure the season had enough works and private teams to make it interesting. The date of the changeover was initially 2020, then 2021, but the FIA said it had four companies interested and that it would definitely be happening. Prototypes of the cars have been built and they are at least as powerful as the current supercars, which means 500bhp plus and 0-100kmh in two seconds.

Then, in summer 2018, the wheels started to come off the wagon. Why this happened is still being debated, but over the course of the second half of the year the big manufacturers dropped out of the sport one by one. In their wake several of the big-name drivers moved on. Increasing costs, the general direness of the world economy and the domination of the championship by one team (VW) have all been cited as reasons, plus the fact the rallycross, as the new kid on the block, doesn’t have the resilience of other series to survive these sorts of setbacks. As things stand, we know the 2019 series will be going ahead in April, but we don’t know who’ll be in it. Many of the regular drivers are still trying to find cars, or money, or both.

So where does this lead the FIAs electric dreams? Officially the plans are still going ahead. Unofficially the fear is that with a diminished series, audiences and sponsors will depart, and that the manufacturers will reconsider splashing out big money on electric supercars. More optimistic voices think this could be a blessing in disguise, that rallycross will become more interesting now more teams will have a chance of winning.

So as things stand the 2012 World Rallycross Championship will certainly sound very different, although what it will look is still uncertain. Making the car on the track electric in itself won’t reduce the carbon footprint of the sport much, as most of the emissions for an event are from the spectators. However, as anyone who’s been to watch motorsport knows, road going versions of the cars on the track very quickly become the desirable cars in the car park. So, if it happens, rallycross going electric should be great news for both eco-warriors and petrolheads, if you’ll be able to still call them that.

To get a flavour of what World RX is like click here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFD78OTzB27H5HD4cjMp2JQ

Here is a test of an electric rallycross car here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIeD56BnI-o

Flashy Motors

Top Ten Eighties Crime Fighting Vehicles

After the whimsical sixties and the gritty seventies came the flashy eighties. Realism was out and flash was in. As ever the hero needed his car, not so much to prove his masculinity as to demonstrate his place in the social scale.

So it's Ray-Bans on and filofaxes at the ready as we count down the best crime fighting vehicles of the decade. 

10. The A Team GMC Van
Cool 2 Style 1 Performance 1 

Okay, so maybe it wasn't the the most stylish wheels to grace the TV, but then Mr T would look rather out of place stepping out of MG Midget. The A Team was a show for boys in which the titular laddish gang took on a different bunch of bad guys every week and, despite firing thousand of rounds of ammunition in their general direction, never actually manage to kill or injure anyone.

The van itself inspired thousands of second rate copies from thousands of second rate people, including the chap near me in Leicester who painted his old Bedford van up in imitation using Dulux emulsion paint. Classy. Not.

However credit to the A-Team, this is a surprisingly proletarian means of transport for the era of Thatcher and Reagan. Not that you can really make a case for the guys being a bunch of class warriors fighting Gordon Geckos of the time, but it's still different.

9. Knight Rider Pontiac Trans-Am.
Cool 1 Style 1 Performance 3

The car's styling is the worst of the eighties, and not really enhanced by the sort strobing red light on the front kids fit to their first Ford Fiesta to try to make it look 'cool'. The original Firebird had been an early muscle car, made famous by Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit, but for this version though the designers concentrated on handling and fuel economy, which is boring.

As the Knight Rider it was supposedly nuclear powered though, which makes it a low emissions vehicle, although on the downside if it was ever involved in an accident they'd have to evacuate California. The Firebird would get its mojo back in future evolutions whilst The Hoff would find fame hanging around with women in bikinis in Baywatch, but for a generation of small boys he'll always be Michael Knight.

8. The Bill Rover SD1 
Cool 1 Style 2 Performance 3

Over the 26 years it was on air the vehicles used by Sun Hill's finest varied from Austin Metros to BMW 5 series, but the one that sticks in the mind - because it was used in the original opening credits - is the Rover SD1 'jam butty car'.

Sun Hill only got the 2.6 litre version, but real cops got the V8, which combined US style grunt with UK style build quality, which could be an 'exciting' combination. Tony Pond rallied a Group A version with some success, although he is mainly remembered for crashing out on the first stage of the 1984 RAC Rally whilst sporting a - then very rare - in-car camera. That was basically the sort of luck this car had and so what could have been an early Sierra Cosworth is not remembered anything like as well as it should be.

7. Morse Jaguar Mark II
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You suspect Endeavour (yes, that was his first name) chose this for comfort rather than speed, probably because high speed car chases are a bit difficult after several pints of Real Ale. However in their day these cars were British Touring Car champions, unbeaten on the racing circuit - except by the occasional lucky Mini - until the Yanks brought over their Ford Galaxies.

Today however the cars project a sense of old world style and respectability, unlike in the sixties when they suggested gangsters or bank robbers. I have no idea where in Oxford Morse ever managed to park the thing, or whether the cooling system was ever up to gridlock at Botley Interchange, but the car is now very much associated with the city. In reality Oxford was where they made the Morris Minor, Maxi, Marina and Triumph Acclaim, so it could have been worse.

The Jaguar also pretty much defined the term 'practical classic' and whilst poor old Jim Bergerac had to struggle with an unreliable Triumph Roadster, with an overdubbed engine,  Endeavour had a vehicle that would usually at least get him to the scene of the crime.

6. Moonlighting BMW 635CSi
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A TV series that was all flash but still a lot of fun. Bruce Willis - yes that Bruce Willis - and the one and only Cybil Shepherd were in a show characterised by one liners and sexual tension. I can't remember a single bad guy they brought to justice, but the jokes were good.


The car was good too. I guess you can't do a eighties car list without including a Beamer, but this one had a genuine competition pedigree and a decent turn of speed. Unfortunately half way through the show's run BMW released the original M3 and after that nobody bothered with the sporty six series version any more. A pity because, although it was too big for rallying, on the circuits it was great and notched up a trio of European Touring Car titles. 

Alas it was still a BMW, and so no matter how witty you may be, if you drive one the jokes will always be about you.

5. The Equalizer Jaguar XJ6
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For me Edward Woodward will always be Callan, the world weary spy working for a ruthless spy agency. But in the 1980s he was Robert McCall, a world weary former spy now dabbling as a free lance private investigator and vigilante.


His XJ6 was certainly stylish, and reasonably quick, but I've always thought of Jaguars as reverse TARDISes - bigger on the outside than the inside. However it suited the premise of the character that he had a big car and a small gun (nudge nudge, oo-err madam) and McCall always used his superior skill and British pluck to take down New York's baddies. 

4. Hart to Hart Mercedes 450SL
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As further evidence that ordinary people were purged from the TV screens in the 1980s, I present Hart to Hart, a story of everyday millionaires who solve murders. Jonathan Hart's Ferrari 246 Dino would be a worthy number one in this list if it hadn't only appeared in the opening credits. Instead the usual vehicle of the Harts was a Mercedes 450 (later a 380) SL.

Despite Janis Joplin wanting one, Mercedes are hardly cool, although this one has some style. The car also has a rallying pedigree, winning a succession of African endurance events. They then signed World Champion Rally Driver Walter Rohrl and asked how good he could make the car in European rallies. He told them they could get sixth on the Monte - if they were lucky - and so they cancelled the program and sacked him. Honesty didn't really pay in the eighties. 

3. Miami Vice Ferrari 365 GTB/4
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This show was always more about style than substance: New Wave music, Armanni suits with t-shirts, loafers with no sock, designer stubble, and a Ferrari.

If this car had been real it would have been a winner. The last of the great front engined Ferraris, it looked, sounded and went like a dream. The premise was that the car had been seized from a drug baron by Vice Squad cops Crockett and Tubbs. As it was Ferrari wanted the real cops to seize the duos car as it was not a real Ferrari, but a replica based on Corvette and made without a license.

Ferrari eventually gave the producers a real Testerossa, on condition they destroyed the fake 365. The Testerossa was a decent machine, but it didn't have the style of the 365.


2. Ashes to Ashes Audi Quattro
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Okay, this wasn't a real eighties TV series, but the Quattro was a real eighties car. Homologated in time for the 1981 rallying season, the Quattro bust onto the scene on the Monte and pulled away from the opposition at a rate of a minute a stage.

Turbo charged and four wheel drive at a time when the former was associated with Formula One and the latter with tractors, the Ur Quattro had both buckets of grunt and the traction to use it.  It was oversized and over-engineered by rally car standards, and you couldn't even do a handbrake turn, but on the road it was reliable and nimble enough to leave many pukka sports cars for dust even on dry gtarmac, and on gravel or snow it was untouchable.

The body was simply the existing Audi 80, but with bulbous wings and huge wheels it looked the part of the Teutonic monster it was.

1. Magnum PI Ferrari 308 GTS
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Magnum was a Nam vet Private Detective living a dream life in Hawaii. Along with the house and the shirt, he also got the car.

The 308 was a cut price Ferrari for the austere seventies. Previous machines with the prancing horse logo had been the fastest things on the road, but the three litre 308 was in danger of being burnt off at the lights by a decent muscle car. On the other hand the car was practical, usable, looked divine and handled like a dream.

It was also a real rally car, the only Ferrari that ever was (unless you count the Tour de France or Targa Florio as rallies, which I don't). The special stage version was developed privately and had a decent turn of speed on tarmac, nearly winning the Tour de Corse a couple of times in the hands of Frenchman Jean Claude Andruet, but Italians being Italians they also rallied them on gravel. 

Magnum kept his on the black stuff, and living on a small island he had a lot of car for not very much road. But what a car. A worthy winner.

If you enjoyed this, check out my top ten crime fighting cars of the sixties and the seventies.

Top Five Movie Car Chases

Do I like car chases? Well yes and no.

I certainly like cars, but if you've stood ten feet away from Colin McRae as he guns a 400bhpish Subaru Impreza through the trees, or seen a genuine Lancia Stratos in action, watching the Second Unit crew on a back lot driving a bog-standard yank tank into cardboard boxes doesn't really impress.

Cars and cinema are technologies that have grown up side by side. Given the ubiquity of cars to films, from plot devices to symbols of the leading man's vitality, picking a top five car chases should have been tricky. However because so many of them are awful, it was actually pretty easy.
 
Plus some of the best chases involve lorries or buses, such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Speed, or are races not chases, such as the wonderful scenes in Grand Prix, Le Mans and Rush.  Mobile battles can't really count either, so bang go the Mad Max and Marvel Superheroes films (literally). Finally the films have to actually be good enough for me to watch, which rules out the entire Fast and Furious franchise.

So what does that leave us with that involves cars and chases and a reasonable film? Here's my top five.

(Click the header to view the chase)

5. The Gumball Rally (1976)

So why did I chose this clip over, say Ronin or Bourne Identity or countless other, and better, scenes? Easy, because of the cars. You see as a rally fan I see cars skidding and crashing all the time, and usually they do it a lot faster and a lot more spectacularly on the stages than they do in the movies.

But a pair of iconic sixties/seventies supercars being driven fast? You don't see that every day.

Okay, so it's not much of a chase, but look at - and listen to - the cars. That's a 1966 Shelby Cobra 427 and a 1972 Ferrari 365 GTS/4 - a real one, not a replica like in Miami Vice. The rest of the film is a bit of fluff, and whilst some of the cars are memorable, the story isn't. Inspired by a real illegal road race, won by racer Dan Guerney in a similar Ferrari 365, the only thing that can really be said in its favour as a film is that it's not as bad at the two Cannonball Run films which mined the same source.

4. The French Connection (1971)

Great though the cars are, you can't get away from the fact they are just in a storm drain. Most cinema car chases though don't take place anywhere you'd recognise.

However a film director who that wasn't afraid to take the action to the real streets was William Friedkin for his Academy Award wining The French Connection. For this chase, just like the rest of the film, conventional cinema techniques were thrown out of the window in place of extreme realism - and I mean extreme.

To film Gene Hackman's character 'Popeye' Doyle chasing an elevated train in a Pontiac Lemans, Friedkin took top Hollywood stunt driver Bill Hickman and persuaded him to drive at 70-80mph for 26 city blocks through Queens, New York. Freidman filmed from the back seat himself, on the grounds the rest of the crew were married and had children whilst he was expendable. There was a certain amount of traffic control and some of the scenes were choreographed, but ...

...they illegally continued the chase into sections with no traffic control, where they actually had to evade real traffic and pedestrians. The car crash during the chase sequence, at the intersection of Stillwell Ave. and 86th St., was unplanned and was included because of its realism. The man whose car was hit had just left his house a few blocks from the intersection to go to work and was unaware that a car chase was being filmed. The producers later paid the bill for the repairs to his car.

It was all insanely dangerous and we should be grateful they don't make films that way any more.
 

3. The Italian Job (1969)

  

The mean streets of Queens certainly suited the gritty realism of The French Connection, but a really good car chase needs a somewhat more exotic background. 

The Italian Job was written as a serious crime drama written by serious screen writer Troy Kennedy Martin. However to make it a little more interesting it was played a variety of comic actors from John Le Mesurier to Benny Hill. It also helped of of course that they used Mini Cooper Ss for the getaway. Had they made their escape in Lotus Cortinas the film would probably be forgotten by now.  

The Minis aren't even the most interesting cars on display. The opening credits roll over a Lamborghini Miura climbing the old St Bernard's pass, and an Aston Martin DB4 and a brace of E-Type Jaguars have a cameo slot before being squashed by a digger.

However it is the Minis that steal the show as they duck, weave and handbrake turn their way across Turin via several of it's better known landmarks. British Leyland stupidly refused to supply enough cars whilst Fiat begged the producers to use their vehicles, even allowing filming on their famous rooftop test track. Little wonder BL isn't around any more.

Fun though The Italian Job is, the cars are really just doing tricks. A pity really because the Cooper S wasn't just a novelty but a rally winning machine. It would have been nice to see, even briefly, the cars really driven in anger.
 

  2. Bullitt (1968)

 

Because that is exactly what we got the year before in the Steve McQueen film about a cop with a ridiculously macho name: Bullitt.

Bits of it still look staged - count how many times that green VW Beetle gets overtaken - and being American cars they seem to have lot of trouble getting round the corners, but overall this looks like exactly what it is: two fast cars being put through their paces by skilled drivers.

The 325bhp Ford Mustang GT really was driven by petrol-head actor McQueen for the close up scenes scenes, but the high speed work was done by a trio of real stuntmen. McQueen's quarry was supposed to have been a Ford Galaxy, but the heavy cars proved not to be up to the job. Instead a 440bhp black Dodge Charger was used, driven by the best man in the business - Bill Hickson. Yes, him again.

In real life the Charger was reportedly so much faster than the Mustang that Hickson had to back off to let the pony car catch. It seems even a macho name is no match for cubic inches.

1. SPECTRE (2015)

So what am I looking for then in a car chase? Supercars, real streets, exotic locations and top drivers putting the machines through their paces. So which film has all of this? Well, the one I saw last week.

Sam Mendes probably put more effort into the car chase in SPECTRE than any director ever has before, which is one reason why the film went massively over budget.

He started with two very exotic cars. Showing that he still hasn't got the hang of the 'secret' bit of being a secret agent, James Bond drives a unique Aston Martin DB10. The 'baddie car' is even more interesting. The original Jaguar C-X75 was a strange hybrid with an electric motor for each wheel. The film versions have V8 engines from the F-Type and suspension from a rally Porsche GT3.

There is not a pixel of CGI in the chase, which takes place on the real streets of Rome. You can tell. The shots that had me baffled though were when Daniel Craig and villain Dave Bautista (Drax the Destroyer from Guardians of the Galaxy) actually appeared to be drifting their cars across the cobbles themselves. The effect was created by building a brace of very special stunt cars. These pod cars were the real thing, except that they had special cockpits on the roof so the stunt drivers could drive whilst the actors posed. As for the stuntmen themselves, I was surprised to find I'd actually met one, in the form of three times British rally champion Mark Higgins.

Okay, there are problems. Dramatically it serves no purpose whatsoever in the story. Bond is even relaxed enough to take a phone call during the chase, but that's a problem for the film not the chase.

Maybe next week I'll change my mind, but at the moment this is the chase that ticks all the boxes for this petrolhead.

Five most unusual cars to enter the RAC rally

It's nearly that time of the year again.

No, not Rally Wales GB, which came and went a couple of weeks ago with very little excitement, but the far more interesting Roger Albert Clark Rally. The year the usual swarm of Escorts are joined by Steve Perez's incomparable Stratos, several continental Porsches and dark horse of the event the Fiat 131 Abarth of Julian Reynolds.

Over the years though the original RAC rally, which evolved into the Rally Wales GB and got itself stuck in the Principality in the process, saw some fairly unusual machinery take part. The word 'exotic' is well used to describe the cameos appearances by the little mid-engined Renault 5 Turbo, the Ford RS200, and the Lancia 037 Rally.

The word weird is probably best used to describe these machines though, the more unusual machines to venture forth into the British forests in November.

5. Panther Lima

At first glance the Lima, made by Blackpool based cottage industry Panther Westwinds, doesn't look a bad choice for a rally car. There's a tasty 2.3 lump taken from a Vauxhall Magnum, a compact two seater body and robust Vauxhall suspension. Admittedly sitting over the back wheels won't make it very comfortable in Kielder and the front wings don't allow for much suspension travel, but those are not the real problems.

You can basically rely on three things on the RAC Rally; it will be cold, wet and miserable. You want a car with performance, handling and reliability, but above all you want a roof. The Lima is ragtop. So hats off to intrepid crew Noel and Patrick Francis who completed the 1978 event in one.

4. Audi 80

It's difficult to believe now, but back in the 1970s Audis were cars for people who found Volvos too exciting. So when a Works team of Group 4 homologated Audi 80s appeared on the 1979 RAC we all wondered what was going on when. Oversized and underpowered, they understeered their way through the stages handicapped by a weight distribution slightly less balanced than a hammer. They were hopelessly off the pace.

Well, less than a year later we found out what was going on when they unveiled the Quattro. Then in 1981 they brought the beast to the UK whereupon the Stuttgart based team used the experience they'd gained with the 80, and the Quattros awesome grip and power, to win every UK forest event they entered. After that Audi had a slightly different image.

3. VW Beetle

Beetles were decent enough rally cars in the sixties, and Porsche engined variants were regular staples of the continental rallycross scene in the seventies and eighties. However it's fair to say that by 1992 it was not the most competitive car around.

But, if you can't make an impact with your car's speed or acceleration, you can always do it with the paint job. Dad Francis worked for Prodrive and was regular on the Historic rally scene in his Porsche. When he asked by young Richard what colour he would like his new rally car painted, he pointed to his Reebok trainers.

Richard finished the rally and didn't come last. He beat an MG Maestro, an Astra GTE, a Nova GSi and something else, which I will tell you about later, so well done young man.

2. Wartburg 353

Teams from the far side of the Iron Curtain used to be regulars on the RAC. The Skodas were genuinely good, and took home more than a score of class wins. The Ladas were fun, and once the official team stopped appearing the Lada Challenge provided tail out action when the rest of the field were front wheel drive.

However there's not much you can say in favour of the poor old Wartburg. Front wheel drive, far too large for its 1150ccs, and a two stroke, it was desperately sad to see the drivers pedaling the car hopelessly through the stages. The one virtue it had was that it was pretty robust - the engine apparently only had seven moving parts. They did actually move faster than you'd expect and one did once come second on a WRC event, although admittedly there were only three finishers, so it also finished second to last.

If nothing else though the Wartburg team dispelled the myth of invincible German technology. For that we must be grateful.

1. Trabant 601S

The end of communism meant the end of the factory teams from Eastern Europe, but the odd privateer did still make it over here. Two such intrepid adventurers were Michael Kahlfub and Gunter Friedemann who brought their Trabant to Britain in 1992.

It was a long time waiting in the rain for the little car with its cardboard bodywork and 595cc two stroke engine, but I wasn't the only fan making the effort. Asked how he found the stages Kahlfub said they were smoother than East German autobahns.

He finished the rally and wasn't last either, coming just behind Richard Tuthill's Beetle and ahead of three hot hatches. I wonder if those drivers ever lived that down?