The History of the British Open Rally Championship: Introduction

For twelve years our principle domestic rally championship was a series known as the British Open. At its height it was the second most important rally series in the world.

These twelve years, from 1978 to 1989 are fondly remembered by British fans. These were years in which British drivers rarely entered, and never won, World Rallies and in which two things could be guaranteed our own round, the RAC; that the weather would be awful and that no British driver would even get a sniff at the lead.

However on our home turf the situation was reversed. The world and his wife came to rally on these isles, and more often than not our boys beat them. In fact of the four men to beat the Brits; Hannu Mikkola, Pentti Airikkala, Ari Vatanen and Stig Blomqvist, three would go on to become World Champion and the fourth, Pentti, actually lived here anyway.

The reason for the home advantage was straightforward; our rallies were completely different to anyone else's. Pace notes were largely banned and instead drivers competed on closed tarmac roads or forest tracks blind. Ultimately this trapped British drivers in a ghetto from which they couldn't escape, so it was a rather mixed blessing, and it wasn't until changes were made in the 1990s that talent started to emerge from these islands to take on the world.

The idea of the Open came about because of the foreign invasion of our domestic RAC British Rally Championship. This had been won by Billy Coleman, an Irishman, in 1974, but the real invasion started in 1976. Ford had unveiled the escort RS1800 the previous year and in the hands of Roger Clark, and using a new innovation of slick tires on tarmac rallies, they had blown the amateur rallyists out of the water and raised the bar significantly.

The next year the first round of the series was won by the very British Andy Dawson in the very un-British Lancia Stratos, whilst the series itself went to the very Finnish Ari Vatanen in a very British Escort. Next year it was Russell Brookes wheel to wheel with Penti Airikkala in the new Chevette RS2300 runner up.

The Open was therefore created to both encourage the foreigners to come over, but also to leave a domestic series which could be used to grow future talent.

Home grown talent that had already emerged included, as well as Clark, Dawson and Brookes, Jimmy McRae, Tony Pond and Malcolm Wilson, and over the next dozen years they would give the visitors a tough time.

Technically these were interesting years too. In 1978 a four wheel drive rally car was starting to be developed by Audi and in 1989 a two wheel drive car won its last World event. However as the series was always pretty much half tarmac, four wheel drive didn't have the advantage in Britain it had on the mainly loose surface WRC.

In terms of the rules we went from group 4 to Group B and then to Group A; from highly modified production cars, to rallying specials and back to modified road cars. the supercars certainly came to Britain, but, possibly because we never saw a full blown works 205T16 or S4 Delta, they never quite managed to dominate.

It helped too that we actually had a British cars industry then. As well as Ford, who whilst technically American had their rally HQ at Boreham, Vauxhall and British Leyland produced top flight rally cars.

So these are the British Open years then, when Britain took on the world and often won, when British cars could beat anything on four wheels and when a top level rally car was within the budget of the dedicated amateur.

We will not see those days again.

Year by year: 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989