After Group B

Group B cars are the legendary monsters of rallying, flame snorting beasts who dominated the stages for half a decade before, like the dinosaurs, they became extinct overnight on 31st December 1986.

But they didn't quite disappear completely.

Normally aspirated Group B cars hung around on national rallies for a while longer, and British fans enjoyed the Opel Mantas for a couple of years and the clubman's version of the Metro 6R4 for considerably longer. The big beasts though were banished from stage rallying and had to find other habitats.

Rallycross had been home to boosted versions of the Group B rally cars for several years by the time of the ban. With extra modification allowed, the cars that came to the fore in rallycross turned out not to be the ones battling for top honours on the stages.

Ford's RS200 had always had potential and the project was killed off prematurely. Fitted with the more powerful engine planned for 1987, it was soon leaving Peugeots and Lancias in its dust, and winning events at the hands of Norway's Martin Schanche.

The only man who could live with Schanche was our own Will Gollop in his Metro 6R4. The 6R4 project, like Rover at the time generally, was something of disaster. Underpowered and unreliable, the team had blundered through a disappointing 1986. However there had been signs of the cars's potential and future world champion Didier Auriel had had some success in a private Metro run by a German team. Gollop added twin turbochargers to his car, which at once wiped out the power disadvantage with Schanche's RS200.


The two of them battled it out around Europe for several years, with the climax coming in the last race of 1988 when Gollop's car caught fire after a shunt and the championship went to the Norwegian.

As rallycross cars only had to survive four laps of a short circuit, they regularly ran boost pressures well in excess of anything the rally boys would risk. 600-700bhp was the norm, and sometimes extra boost was used to get them away. In acceleration the would beat a contemporary F1 car.

However whilst Schanche and Gollop were by no means amateurs, they weren't running works cars. Most of the Group B teams returned to rallying with Group A cars, but one didn't.

Peugeot were the big loosers when Group B was banned, having managed to make the 205T16 almost unbeatable. Stung by the actions of the FIA, they were French after all and France is supposed to control world motorsport, they refused to play the Group A game and took their bat home.

Instead they spent the winter welding an extra section into the middle of the 205 and practising making it fly through the air better by reversing the transverse engine. It now didn't nose dive on overrun, as Ari Vatanen's had disastrously done in Argentine in 1985. They then set off on the most French of motor races, the Paris-Dakar rally.


An adventure across the north African desert, the Dakar was then mainly famous for being the race in which Mark Thatcher got lost - the only competitor ever to do so.

It had hitherto attracted a motley collection of souped-up Lada Nivas, Range Rovers and the home made buggies, but Porshe had upset the apple cart the year before when they finally found a use for their 959, a car that had been homologated for a cancelled Group B circuit racing series. The 205 won by a country mile in '87, and then came runner up to its replacement, the 405T16, the next year.

In Africa Peugeot cleaned up, but they were really only fighting the desert. The real fun came when the teams took on each other. There had been friendly rivalry between Peugeot and Audi at the annual Race of Champions, an event organised annually from 1988 by Michelle Mouton. Top drivers from the world of rallying would battle it out side by side in a series of identical cars. The drivers were the only ones who got prizes, but there was a lot of unofficial rivalry between the teams to see who could get FTD. Audi and Peugeot both sent cars to the first two events and, despite Audi turning the power up to 11, the Peugeots ended up being fastest.

But the last true battle between Group B giants took place not in Europe, but in America. The Pikes Peak International Hillclimb is an annual event held every year since 1916 in Colorado. The drivers start at the bottom of the mountain and the chequered flag is 1439 metres above them. The course runs for just under twelve and a half miles and features 156 corners and is a mixtures of tarmac and gravel.

Traditionally the home of the Good Old Boys and their V8 powered home made buggies, European teams started to try the event in the early 1980s. Initially the rally cars only competed for their own prizes, but soon it was clear that the Group B cars were able to beat the open wheelers in a straight fight.

In 1984 conservative American races were shocked when Michelle Mouton won the event outright in a long wheelbase Quattro. She repeated the feat the following year in the short version and then in 1986 Booby Unser decided that if you can't beat them, join them, and won the event in another Quattro. In 1987 Audi returned once more, this time with Walter Rohrl to lead the attack.

But old rivals Peugeot weren't going to let the Germans have it their own way and sent a brigade strength team led by Ari Vatanen. The 205T16s and the S2 Sport Quattros both featured outrageous wings and huge amounts of boost. Rohrl's car allegedly fielded in excess of 1000bhp.

There was also an S4 Delta, an RS200, a 6R4, a Mazda RX7 and a twin engined Golf on the menu (not a homologated Group B car, but VW did actually consider a twin engined Scirocco at one point), but these were just the supporting act.

The main event was Audi versus Peugeot, German team and German driver versus French team and French resident driver. Vatanen was fastest in training. But when it came to the real thing for once the Germans came out on top and Rohrl blasted to the top to set a new record time.

This wasn't the actual end of Group B; they were legal in rallycross until 1992 and Peugeot continued to enter the Dakar and even returned to the Peak in 1988 with a 405, narrowly beating Rohrl's time.

But this was the last duel of the Group B works teams, and perhaps it's fitting that we end the story here, with Rohrl gunning his thousand brake horsepower winged monster up into the clouds, Vatanen grimly following in his less-than-delicate French model. The end of an era. We shall not see their like again.

Watch it here.

400+bhp on closed roads, was Group B unique? No.