The History of the World Rally Championship: 1987

The demise of Group B took everyone by surprise.

Group B had been the biggest thing in motorsport whilst it was going and it's replacement, Group A, had only been of passing interest to the manufacturers. Suddenly everyone was looking at the cars they'd homologated, many of them seemingly on a whim, and trying to figure out which ones could be made to work.

5000 Group A cars had to be made and sold, so they needed to be reasonably practical. There were going to be no more mid mounted engines or Kevlar bodies. Given that a front engine and steel body were inevitable, what was needed was at least two litre capacity, turbo charged engine, and a four wheel drive system in a reasonably compact body.

Unfortunately only one manufacturer had the Full Monty.

Mazda had a nice little 4x4, but it only had a 1.6 engine and there appeared to be no way of making it larger. Ford had a tasty two litre turbo, but it was only rear wheel drive. They also had a four wheel drive, but it was normally aspirated. Audi had a great engine and tried and tested four wheel drive system, but they were in a car the size of a bus. BMW and Nissan had neither a turbo charger nor four wheel drive, and so on.


That effectively left Lancia the champions elect before the season had even begun.

The season was a curious affair. Lancia won a snowy Monte Carlo with ease, but then had to endure a post rally appeal against their interpretation of the Group A rules. They won, and the other teams then went scurrying off to modify their cars accordingly.

In Sweden an excess of the white stuff allowed Timo Salonen a chance to give Mazda their maiden WRC victory in the underpowered 323. Japanese cars had won rallies before, but once before in Europe. The Japanese invasion had begun, after a fashion, because Mazda then promptly withdrew from rallying for six months in order to try to make their transmissions work.


In Corsica the Italians discovered that, in contrast to past form, that their cars are now better on loose surfaces than tarmac as they were beaten by Bernard Beguin's BMW M3. Beguin needed a bit of luck to beat Yves Loubet, as rain had put the Lancia ahead until punctures slowed the four wheel drive car, but it was an historic victory for number of reasons.

This was the first victory under its new name of Prodrive for the now Banbury based outfit David Richards had inheritted from David Sutton. It was also the last World Rally ever to be won by a 'conventional' (i.e. front engined, rear wheel drive, normally aspirated) car.

Apart from that, the Lancia team won every rally they entered. They skipped Africa and New Zealand, but privateer Franz Wittmann won that one for them anyway. This was a total of eight victories, a record, and as only the best seven scores counted it gave them a maximum score.

The Drivers Championship was a little more exciting, but not much. Team orders gave the Monte to Biasion instead of Kankkunen. Alen, now an old stager, won three rallies, and the championship ended up a three way battle between those three drivers.


The RAC was a climax of a sort. Biasion stayed home, as he had already entered more rallies than the other two, and so it was Alen and Kankkunen head to head again. Once more it was to be Alen who was the unlucky one. TV cameras on the Chatsworth stage had a perfect view of his first roll of the event. This put Kankkunen ahead, and whilst he was chasing the leader Alen had a more serious off in 'killer Kielder'.

If Kankkunen's win was the triumph, the tragedy was what happened to Per Eklund. He's spent most of the rally locked in a duel for second place with his old Saab team mate Stig Blomqvist. Compared to the Lancias, Eklund's Audi Coupe lacked power and Blomqvist's Sierra lacked traction, but against each other they were evenly matched. Eklund came home 28 seconds in front, but was then excluded when post rally scrutineering found slighty oversized valves in his car, the result of untypically poor German quality control.

Lancia and Kankkunen were deserved winners, but the general feeling was that if things went on like this nobody would be watching in twelve months time.