Brief history background

Group A cars

These cars have to be produced to numbers above 2500 units to get the FIA homologation. No manufacturer can afford to produce the like of the monstrous, but exiting, Group B cars anymore (it would be financially impossible). Nowadays rally cars resemble (at a distance) everyday cars much more than group B cars did, hence a more direct marketing impact and big money to be made.

Note however that technology improvements (mainly in tires, brakes, transmission and engine management) make today's group A cars faster than the group B monsters were!

Today's top Group A (A8) cars have in common:

• 4 wheel drive transmissions
• 2 liter turbo charged engines (there's an FIA 1.7 multiplication coefficient for turbo charged cars)
• Front mounted engines (longitudinal or transversal)
• Minimum weight of 1230 Kg

Modifications allowed according to FIA groupA regulations:

• Full suspension geometry and layout. The original mounting points must be preserved
• Engine internals including camshafts, crankshaft, valves. Other engine components can be machined. The engine bloc must be preserved
• Engine peripherals (Radiators, intercooler)
• Engine management
• Braking system
• Gearbox,  gear ratios, number of gears and gear selection
• Differentials
• Final drive ratio
• Electric equipment

Some of the most successful incarnations of current groupA cars are:

• The Ford Escort and Sierra RS Cosworth
• The Lancia Integrale
• The Subaru Impreza
• The Mitsubishi Lancer and Carisma Evolution IV
• The Mitsubishi Lancer and Carisma Evolution V
• The Toyota Celica GT4

Today's GroupA cars are real racing cars with no suspension, engine or drivetrain bushing, fully adjustable suspension, straight cut non-synchronized gears and the like.

OK, you'll ask. If these 4WD turbocharged cars are so great how come they are matched, or even beaten in some cases, by Group F2 (2 liter non turbo, 2 wheel drive cars). The answer to that question is weight. Group F2 cars weight 300Kg less than their 4 wheel drive turbo charged counterparts and as you might know, weight is the worst enemy of any race car.

Group F2 cars were created to reduce the cost of building a rally car. Some of them, the Peugeot 306 Maxi (picture here), Renault Maxi Megane (picture here), Renault Clio Maxi  and others cost approximately the same as the turbo charged 4x4 cars. The price argument is not valid. This category of rally car exists only because some manufacturers would like to promote, through rallying, cars that are more appealing to the general public.

The existence of F2 cars threatens all turbo charged 4 wheel drive cars. It's a shame because these cars are far less spectacular than the 4 wheel drive cars are.

A new page in world rallying is being written right now like, back in 1986, when the group B cars disappeared.

This new situation brought, eventually, Japanese manufacturers in the race. While this is an excellent challenge to European manufacturers it has a downside: now very big amounts of money are part of the game. Toyota, Mazda, Subaru, Nissan and lately Mitsubishi have joined the World rally Championship with cars that the Europeans have a lot of trouble matching. You must realize that while Japanese cars are excellent (and most probably better than European ones) they are so only because the manufacturers behind them spend enormous amounts of money on their development. Apparently European manufacturers do not realize the impact of being World Rally Champion on the sales of a car.

On the positive side, the Japanese racing cars are built in Europe by companies such as Prodrive (for Subaru), Ralliart (for Mitsubishi) and Toyota Team Europe. The know-how on building a pure breed is still with us Europeans.

On the negative part, the fact that today the amounts of money involved in rally racing are so great has changed the once "gentlemen" rallying world to an efficient and heartless machine reminding a lot the F1 championship. Rallying is, by nature, a sport very close to its public and therefore quite different to Formula 1. The FIA authorities must at some point realize that the attempt to transform rallying to something reminding the F1 Championship may eventually lead to the extinction of the sport.

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