Group B: When Rallying Got TOO FAST

I love Rally Racing! Those Europe spectators are nuts. Thx for sharing.

Have some 'acquaintances' that race rally cars through the woods on roads cut for fire access here in the USA.

I don't know what their IQ level is, but.....

I absolutely love watching WRC Rally, but its almost impossible to watch in the USA. I even paid for the WRC app through amazon prime and it still had pretty dismal coverage.

Thanks for posting this Back then (and still now) I was totally into the WRC and had my then daily driver loaded up with Cibié Oscar + driving lights and Cibié amber fog lights, a rear deck duck tail small spoiler, lowered, wide tires all around, Bilstein sport shocks and a nice sounding sport exhaust. I loved taking any back road route to get to where I was going just so I could drive rally-like though Ohio, Pennsylvania, WV, Virginia, NC, etc., Those cars and drivers were outstanding and really developed the AWD cars and SUV's of this day. I still have that car to this day.

Mike

Please post up some pictures of your car.

Nothing special just "day-2'd" it to make it a little more rural road friendly. '86 Jetta GLI which used the Golf GTI engine with the 5-speed close ratio manual trans and 4-wheel power discs. GTI sport interior/seats cruise, A/C, sunroof and Alpine 500 watt audio system.....and I had a AM/FM/CB power antenna that worked great as a stealth backup with the Escort radar detector. As I said noting special but a little thought or influence from rally cars for me.

Mike

Yeah, that stuff was nuts! I worked with a guy who left the shop we worked at together to be the crew chief for the Norseman Racing Ford Escort. This was in the early to mid 90's. It had a Cosworth Ford single turbo 4 cylinder that made about 425 hp. It was one of the first cars to have an anti-lag system. Basically, it would fire the ignition with the exhaust valves open and it would actually start to build boost at idle if you let it sit there idling for a minute. I remember him telling me it did 0-60 in 3 seconds on asphalt and 3.5 seconds in dirt! I got a ride in it one time and he didn't thrash it because he was heading off to a race, but you could tell it was an insane ride. It was so stiff, you could feel every little thing through the seat of your pants.

The spectators had their own game or competition during that time and that was to make hand contact with a rally car as it came by. Many stories of blood being found on the rally car by the pit crew..........during one re-fueling there was a thumb found at the fuel cap..........I guess that was a confirmed contact by that spectator for his group eh?

Cool video, thanks for posting. Back then my buddy and I were the only guys in school that followed rallying. The "Killer Bs" were a true spectacle.

I was young and I happened to see some Group B cars running for the first time on TV. Likely it was on Wide World of Sports--no cable TV at that time.

I had never seen any thing like it--even at I young age I knew it was insanity...

The idiot spectators were all in southern Europe, the drivers hated them. Although Finns have pretty much dominated the sport I have had no interest in it after the mid-sixties. https://youtu.be/Dv_N1lwo3Ws

i don't think all the idiot spectators were in europe.
i sort of remember watching some rally racing in africa that the spectators were worse than in europe ! i just can't remember when that was. it was many years ago, and i came upon that event by accident, just flipping channels. i stayed glued to the idiot box because of the idiot spectators !