Group B Rally Whiffs

[Mossie]

Something a little bit different, automative whiffery.  Group B Rally was a short lived but impressive rally class with few restrictions on what technology could be used.  It inspired some spectacular cars such as the Lancia 037 & Delta, Ford RS200, Audi Quattro S1& a rally version of the Ferrari 288 GTO.  It only lasted four years in the WRC from 1980-1984 as several tragic accidents occurred due to the high performance, although it continued in some form in other competitions into the nineties.

Question is, if the class could have continued safely, what would you like to see as a Group B car, or in what direction do you think development might have headed???

Info on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_B

[lenny100]

might have been a Bugatti veron wrc, now is there a 1/24 to build this

[Rheged]

Now that Jaguar and Land Rover are one company, is there space for  a  judicious blend of Jaguar scorching performance and Land Rover incredible cross country ability?

[Mossie]

Both sound good, the Veyron has all wheel drive so it could make a rally car with a few mods.  I like the sound of Jag with Landie 4x4 tech, fantastic!

The Mini was good rally car in the smaller engine classes.  BMW has recentley produced the 4x4 MINI Countryman (we hates it, we hates it, precious...!!!), although it's not really rally car material.  Still, take a MINI Cooper, modify it heavily to take mid-engine in a similar manner to the Renault 5 Turbo & you might have something credible.

Talking of mid-engined super-mini's, the Clio V6 was built along similar lines to the (in)famous 5 Turbo & might have made a worthy successor.

[Hobbes]

Ah yes, group B. One of my favorite motor sports ideas. Way back when, a Dutch car magazine ran an article 'what if Group B had existed in the 1950s'. Featuring a DKW with its three-cylinder replaced with a five-cylinder engine, some sort of Renault with the engine in place of the rear seats and more in that vein.

Group B was heading fast towards purpose-built cars, so modified road cars would have had little chance. Still, speculation is fun.

The Metro 6R4 was underpowered, so it gets a turbo bolted onto the V6. Mitsubishi gets to develop its Starion 4wd properly and becomes a serious competitor; Subaru would join in too. Two-stage turbocharging becomes popular in an effort to improve drivability.  

Lada (AutoVAZ) joins in, first with a 2101 with a ZIL v8 in the rear, later with a Porsche-engined Samara.


The Veyron is way too heavy to compete.

[Hobbes]

Thinking about this some more; group B didn't have many rules, but there were a few that are no fun, mainly regarding engine size.

What surprised me is that group B didn't see much use in racing. The Ferrari 288 GTO and Porsche 959 are the exceptions. In later years, the gr B rally cars would be used for rallycross, which is done on a circuit with both tarmac and unpaved sections, and shows that the rally cars would have been fun on a circuit as well.


And another car that would have been nice to see: Skoda. They did some fabulous racers based on their old rear-wheel drive 135/Estelle.

[rallymodeller]

First, go to Marvdogger's Youtube channel. Enough Group B on there to satisfy just about anyone.

{puts on expert hat}

If Group B had extended into and past 1987, it's most likely that its status as the premier rallying division would have been eclipsed by the even-more-bonkers Group S, which required no homologation cars but did have a cap on engine power (300hp). Several companies were already testing Group S cars; Toyota, Lancia, Audi and others had Gp. S. cars in the works. Were that to go forward Group B would have been the domain of the also-rans and privateers.

However, that being said Group B was already changing in the 1986 season. It was becoming apparent to the manufacturers that simply adapting a road car was no longer feasible. Audi, despite its occasional success with the latest S2 Sport Quattro, found that front-engined was a loser's game and was planning a mid-engined car for its Group S entry. The cars would have to be purpose-designed from scratch to make the most of the rules, and only one company had actually done that:

Ford. The RS200 was built from the ground up as a 100% no-compromises rally car. Everything about the car was built with Group B in mind, from the suspension to the drivetrain to the actual shape. In truth, it was more a prototype of the Group S cars to come than a Group B car, except Ford had to build 200 of them (they were actually built by Reliant of Robin fame). By the end of the '86 season the RS200E2 was starting to really show its speed and would have been a serious competitor for the title in '87. Even as it made its debut other manufacturers were taking notice. Up until recently the RS200E2 was the fastest-accelerating "production" car ever, going from 0-60 in 2.5 seconds.

Unfortunately, front-engined cars like the Starion 4x4 were already obsolete in the face of the Lancia Delta S4, Peugeot 205T16E2 and RS200E2. It would have had a chance in the Safari, but little elsewhere. The Metro 6R4 was due for an Evolution model, but reports were that it wasn't much changed (mainly aerodynamics and some engine tweaks) from the "standard" 6R4. There was a Samara-based Lada entry slated for '87 -- mid-engined, AWD, composite bodyshell, the works -- although whether this would have been competitive remains a mystery.

As to anyone who thinks that a Veyron would have made a good rally car: Not a chance. It's too heavy, too big and not nearly tough enough. 1000hp? Bah. Audi had a 1000hp 2.3L 5-cylinder in '86. Just because a car had AWD and a powerful engine doesn't mean it'd be good as a rally car; ask Citroen. The BX-4TC was a spectacular failure.

But in truth, the days of Group B have passed. Technology has advanced to such a degree that recent WRC cars are routinely as fast, if not faster, over the same stages as the old Group B cars; they are also safer to boot. The advance of active traction control and similar systems has shown that it doesn't matter how much power you have, getting it to the ground is more important. 

[rallymodeller]

All that aside, it would have been nice to see Chrysler, Mercedes, BMW and GM in the fray. There was a proposed 4x4 Vauxhall Chevette in the early days of Group B but it went no farther than the drawing board.

[jcf]

BMW has recentley produced the 4x4 MINI Countryman (we hates it, we hates it, precious...!!!), although it's not really rally car material. 

BMW/Prodrive disagreeses preciouses:
http://www.wrc.com/news/mini-set-for-historic-wrc-debut/?fid=14600

[rallymodeller]

Leave it to Prodrive. I have been following the development of the Countryman rally car since it was hinted at, and the amount of research Prodrive did before even starting construction on the prototype was staggering. Using their own WRC data and a copy of the 2011 rules, they constructed a virtual rally car completely in a computer. They then ran it through simulated testing with different configurations until they had come up with the ideal weight, wheelbase, track and so forth. It was only then they started looking for a base car to fit the data they had compiled. Apparently the Countryman was chosen because it has a slightly longer wheelbase than a standard MINI. This thing is going to be a winner. Guaranteed. If you want to see the future of rallying, it's that there MINI.

[Hobbes]

But in truth, the days of Group B have passed. Technology has advanced to such a degree that recent WRC cars are routinely as fast, if not faster, over the same stages as the old Group B cars; they are also safer to boot. The advance of active traction control and similar systems has shown that it doesn't matter how much power you have, getting it to the ground is more important. 

I read some stuff about the Audi rally team recently that confirms that. They used to drive with all 3 differentials locked; something you normally never do on paved roads. They had so much wheelspin that it didn't matter. They also had to contend with turbo lag measured in seconds, so they had to basically floor the throttle before the corner, in order to have full power when exiting the corner.

[rallymodeller]

But in truth, the days of Group B have passed. Technology has advanced to such a degree that recent WRC cars are routinely as fast, if not faster, over the same stages as the old Group B cars; they are also safer to boot. The advance of active traction control and similar systems has shown that it doesn't matter how much power you have, getting it to the ground is more important. 

I read some stuff about the Audi rally team recently that confirms that. They used to drive with all 3 differentials locked; something you normally never do on paved roads. They had so much wheelspin that it didn't matter. They also had to contend with turbo lag measured in seconds, so they had to basically floor the throttle before the corner, in order to have full power when exiting the corner.

Audi also played around with some anti-lag systems that would curl your hair. One of them involved injecting raw fuel into the hot side of the turbo, basically making it a small jet engine, while another had a geared electric motor that would keep the turbo spinning at the 120,000rpm level of boost (but only at off-throttle). The hot-side injector setup basically ate turbochargers -- it would, over the course of an event, destroy the impeller blades. Not bad when you consider the KKK turbos they were using were (in 1986 dollars) about $7500 a pop. One of Ford's big innovations in the RS200 was a variable torque-split setup but it was all manually controlled from the cockpit by a lever. Controlled front-to-back only but at the time it was a very big deal.

[Mossie]

BMW/Prodrive disagreeses preciouses:
http://www.wrc.com/news/mini-set-for-historic-wrc-debut/?fid=14600

It burns us, it burns us!  Well, I'm proved wrong, I thought it was a bit to chunky to make a rally car, although it's more compact than I thought.  Although I'm less than keen on it (never guessed eh? ) as a supposed Mini, it does look a little bit better in rally get up.  Be interesting to see it....