Light pods, assemble! Kicking up mud with rallying’s most intoxicating formula.
What does night racing look like in your dreams? For us, it’s a vision of some wedgelike rally missile spraying gravel behind it, an armada of flood lights pointing ahead. For the “Night Issue” of Road & Track, we brought that vision to life.
By the generosity of Steve Rimmer, collector and Dirtfish rally school’s owner, we gathered a clutch of Group B homologation specials and loosed them against the Pacific Northwest’s grandeur. For one late-winter night, Dirtfish’s grounds were ours. At our disposal were legends from one of rallying’s most evocative eras, a time when race cars still bared a whiff of resemblance to their roadgoing counterparts, but hid hyperbole under their skins: 600-horse turbocharged engines, sophisticated suspension, and some of the greatest drivers the sport has ever seen. We came away with a photo set like something from our dreams, a celebration of rallying at is most effervescent and dangerous: Group B at night.
This story originally appeared in Volume 10 of Road & Track.
MG Metro 6R4
The 6R4 is MG’s frumpy, workaday Metro, weaponized by Frank Williams. With a twin-cam V-6 making 400 horses wedged behind the seats, this is the gnarliest shoebox the world ever saw.
Audi Sport Quattro
The Sport Quattro entered the World Rally Championship as an all-wheel-drive curiosity and left as a legend, shattering rallying’s two-wheel-drive paradigm forever. This roadgoing homologation equivalent represents a landmark in rally history, and it’s coated in a slick shade of green to boot.
Peugeot 205 T16
With up to 400 horses in race trim and a wheelbase the length of a toenail, the 205 T16 could cross up a driver’s hands in an instant. But most don’t know that this Peugeot was the most successful Group B rally car that ever raced, besting Audi’s Sport Quattro with 16 total wins, two manufacturers’ championships, and two drivers’ titles. Take that, Ingolstadt.
Lancia 037
Lancia’s strange, monstrous, beautiful 037 leveraged double wishbones at all four corners and a super-charged 2.0-liter four amidships to tackle Group B. Up close, the Kevlar body looks rudimentary. But at full chat, the 037 is rallying poetry, especially in this funky blue-on-yellow Fiat-Olio livery.
Keyword: Audi Sport Quattro, Peugeot 205 T16, Lancia 037, MG Metro 6R4: The Group B Rally Dream Shoot