Before Group B

Group B rallying. 400+bhp cars on ordinary roads. We've never seen anything like it before or since - or have we?

The distinction between racing on circuits and rallying on roads is a relatively recent development. Racing started on ordinary roads and only in the last thirty years moved exclusively to circuits. The main difference was that races took place on the straightest and fastest roads, whilst rallies took place on the twistiest and slowest. That's why the first rally is generally considered to be the 1910 Alpenfahrt and not the 1894 Paris to Rouen.

In the twilight world between stage rallying and circuit racing though were the road races; sports cars setting off at timed intervals on closed public roads. Road racing started in Sicily seven years before the Germans started fahrting in the Alps.

The most famous road race was the Mille Miglia, which ran from Brescia at the foot of the Alps down to Rome and back again. Some of the road had open drops on the outside of the bends and in the 1930s Mussolini posted Blackshirts with flaming torches on the outside of the corners - about the only practical use for fascists I've ever heard of.

By the mid fifties the top cars had over 300bhp and could reach 180mph - which they frequently did on the longer straights. With 1950s brakes this could be a bit hairy, so Stirling Moss for one took along a co-driver to read an early form of pace notes. With no intercom instructions were limited to simple hand gestures meaning faster or slower, but it was another way in which these races resembled rallies.

The Italian drivers tended to rely on local knowledge instead and, in the case of multiple winner Clente Biondetti, cigars and brandy too. Perhaps not surprisingly a series of accidents ended the race for good in 1957.

Down in Sicily though the original road race, the Targa Florio, carried on for a further fifteen years. Now perhaps only remembered for giving its name to a topless Porsche, the route of the Targa varied over its history until it eventually settled down to eleven laps of a 45 mile circuit near Palermo.

By the late sixties 400bhp had been reached and passed. It was generally the smaller cars that won, but the race still saw big beasts like the four litre Ferrari 330P3 (left) and seven litre Ford GT40.

Italian fans drove their own tiny bubble cars out into the countryside to see the big supercars, just like they did in the mid 1980s, and they were able to enjoy the surreal spectacle of 200mph racing sports cars negotiating one street Sicilian villages, as in the picture at the top of this post.

Fastest Targa Florio driver of all was the Englishman Vic Elford (right), winner in 1968 and regular setter of fastest laps. Also a winner of 13 Grand Prix, the Daytona 24 Hours and the Monte Carlo Rally, he was probably the greatest all-rounder motorsport has ever produced.

But it wasn't our Vic that the crowds wanted to see, but local boy Nino Vaccarella, a former teacher from Palermo. Always driving Italian cars, in 1970 he was given the biggest monster of them all, the 500+bhp Ferrari 512S (top of page). Far too large for the event, especially as it rained part way through, he was beaten by the nimbler 3 litre Porsche 908s.

It took some guts to venture forth on those roads with so much grunt and the next time a car that powerful ventured forth on a closed public road, probably in the ill fated 1986 Portuguese rally, it was with four wheel drive and much better tires.

Vic Elford though was not the only driver to have won both the Targa Florio and the Monte Carlo Rally. In 1972 Sandro Munari co-drove the winning Ferrari 312P (left). Allegedly the use of El Draco in this race was the price Enzo Ferrari extracted from Lancia for their use of his Dino engine in the Stratos.


The last 'proper' Targa Florio was in 1973, although as the racers retired early it was won by a rather tame looking Porsche 911, while a prototype Lancia Stratos, with that Dino engine, was second. After that they didn't let the sports cars enter and the Targa became an ordinary rally, although cars like Andruet's Ferrari 308 (right) still gave the event an exotic feel.

However the Italians weren't the only ones to do it in the road. On the other side of the Alps the French had the Tour de France Automobile, a mixture of races, hill climbs and rally stages. It didn't boast quite the impressive machinery of the Targa Florio, but until it too became just an ordinary rally there were some tasty Matras and Ferrari 365GTB4s (395bhp - according to my contemporary Top Trumps packet).

It wasn't long after the demise of the Targa that the Italians decided to make their own version of the Tour de France in the form of the Giro d'Italia. It too consisted of races and rally stages. Amongst the winners over the years were a Lancia Stratos Turbo and a Porsche 935.

In 1979 the Lancia team rolled out their new Lancia Beta Montecarlo Turbo, with rally drivers Markku Alen and Walter Rohrl teamed up with Grand Prix men Riccardo Patrese and Giles Villeneuve to drive them. Unlike the road going, normally aspirated versions with their dodgy build quality and worrying tendency to understeer off the road at inopportune moments, these cars were real 400bhp racers that would give a Group B car a run for its money on tarmac. Indeed the central section went on to form part of the Lancia 037 Group B car.

The result was exciting stuff, as can be seen here. They lost to a Porsche, but returned in 1980 with Michele Alboretto in place of Villeneuve and this time blew the German cars into the weeds.

By this point the world economy was deep in recession and so the Giro was wound up. It was revived in 1988 for tin tops, but this proved to be a one off. By then Group B had been banned from rallying and so the days of outrageously powerful sports cars on closed public roads was over.

More or less.

There's still the somewhat niche rallying genre of 'N GT', where near-standard Porsche 911GT3s and Aston Martin V8s battle it out. Almost as powerful as WRC cars and a lot more sideways, they're perhaps not quite in the same league as Nino Vaccarella in his 512S.

Those days really have passed.