[Everymans]

Not sure if this is the place to post this but I've really wanted to have this discussion as of late. Since i went to the pacific forest rally in Merritt I've had a great interest in rally racing and the history behind it. Like most rally fans i've been obsessed with the legendary group b rally cars of the 1980's and I've started thinking up ideas for how it could be resurrected to fit into the modern rally day scene. WRC has been zerged so hard in the last decade that it has really lost my attention. I miss the excitement and ridiculously overpowered cars of yester year and not these 1.4l hatchbacks that all look the friggen same.

So what do you think would compete if they brought back group b rally racing? No turbo restrictions, 3000cc engine restrictions(depending on class), 100 production car homologation, potential allowance of traction control, and obviously better safety features. I know it's never going to happen given the history of the sport, but for this thread, let us pretend, and create some badass prototype cars that would someday become legends.

Here's some of my ideas
Audi rs3. Strip it, make it a 2 door. Or make an audi rs1
Bmw m1 awd
Subaru BRZ awd
Vw Golf r or a scirocco r
Ferrari taking another whack at it with a 3 liter turbo'd awd machine
Porsche reinventing the cayman for awd, or building something totally balls to wall like the 959
Lancia revival?
toyota sports car revival?
Tesla making a rally car?
And all the other current staples in the wrc class. Mini cooper, citreon ds3, Ford Fiesta, Hyundai i20, potentially a genesis AWD concept.

[CCA-Dave]

Hate to say it, but you'll never be able to recreate the excitement and/or awesomeness of Group B...for two simple reasons: safety and technology.

Group B was cancelled back in the day for safety reasons, for both the competitors and the spectators. After a series of high-profile deaths and accidents in 1986 group b was cancelled for the 1987 season, and plans for group S (which was to follow it) were cancelled as well. Look at any form of motorsports today, even up to F1 racing. The biggest concern of any sanctioning body is lowering racing speeds while still maintaining "the current" sense and scope of competition. We're just a more litigation aware society as a whole, and any Western-Based championship is going to take safety as a key priority in it's makeup. For stage rally, where there are so many other variables (road makeup, spectators, terrain, etc) you'll never see that "blank-slate" approach to making cars as fast as they possibly could be. But it wasn't just the cars. Rally stages back then were straighter, wider and had more sweeping corners. Today's rally stages are tighter and more technical, chosen that way in part to help slow cars down and increase the margin of safety.

GrpB was wild to drive, and wild to watch, because you had a ridiculously powered car with essentially zero computer aids running on suspension and tire technology we would find laughable in comparison to todays standards. The handling was atrocious and the brakes terrible. Today's cars, are faster...they just aren't as exciting to watch. Computer controlled diffs, suspension technology, tire technology and all the other improvements we've made have made cars far, far, far less exciting to watch on a rally stage. With tires that grip, and suspension that works (as opposed to the wooden variety from the group B era) the fastest way through a stage is a smooth racing line. Far more track like, and less "rally" like.

I think it was 1988 or 1989, just one or two years after Group B was cancelled, that the new "slower" Group A spec was posting faster stage times then Group B. Here's a comparison between 1986 and 1992, which doesn't factor in weather or exact same stage questions. It's as close as I can find quickly:

Monaco 1986
SS32 Col de Turini 2 22.40 km Toivonen, Henri 18:36 72.26 km/h
1992
SS19 Col de Turini 2 22.21 km Sainz, Carlos 16:05 82.86 km/h

Sadly, for a lot of reasons, it's just never going to happen. Fun as a mental exercise, but that's about it.

-Dave

[tofu1413]

even if there were another group B / group S, I think it'd be similar to what the current le mans prototype kind of car or even some of the hypercars.

priorities will be winning race car first, production car second.

full on tube framed or even carbon monocoque chassis cars with carbon / other exotic materials.

great for our imaginations, but will make no sense for a class like this in the current economy for any manufacturer. think of the costs behind it!

best way I can think of are rally versions of the current hyper cars... (P1, laferrari, 918) or le Mans prototypes (Audi R20, Toyota TS040) or even a completely evolved motorsport equivalent of a BMW i8