20 years ago, the World Rally Car saved the WRC

The unthinkable was happening. Lancia was leaving the World Rally Championship. Lancia. Something was wrong. Something had to be done.

To many, 1986 and the end of Group B represents rallying’s greatest crisis; we’re all well versed with the tragic evidence underpinning such theory. But a decade on and rallying really needed help on a global scale. Manufacturer numbers were dwindling and the sport and series’ future looked bleak.

The problem was nothing like as front-page-grabbing as the fatalities that marred the mid-1980s. No. This was much more simple: the sharp end of the World Rally Championship had become too trick, too tech and far too pricey.

Twenty years ago this season, world motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, introduced a raft of regulations that would change world rallying forever. Those rules introduced two decades ago have not only lasted longer than any other technical regulations in the WRC’s 44-year history, but they underpin the 2017 principles that have allowed the championship to flourish today.

Since the dawn of WRC time, like all motorsport categories, classes were demarked by numbers and letters. Group 4 was the premier class before it became Group B, which turned to Group A in 1987. In 1997 the Group was gone (but not entirely forgotten as the cars were still categorised as Group A) in favour of something much more fitting with what was being seen as a new dawn for the sport and the championship. 

In 1997, the World Rally Car was born.

In one fell swoop, the FIA simultaneously slashed the cost of competing and removed the major barriers of manufacturer entry to rallying’s upper echelons. Building 200 bespoke machines simplified a Group B programme, but 1997 made it even more straightforward and a whole heap safer. The rules offered significant technical freedom, but nothing like the rope that Group B had been afforded when the sport came so close to hanging itself.

The day after Henri Toivonen and Sergio Cresto perished in a fire that engulfed their Lancia Delta S4 in Corsica, then-FISA president Jean-Marie Balestre announced the 1987 World Rally Championship would be for Group A cars only. Overnight, manufacturers went from building spaceships in the corner of a factory to needing a production run of 5,000 cars per year before they would be considered for homologation. And those 5,000 had to be the exact motor intended for competition.

Lancia landed on its feet with the Delta HF 4WD and Mazda was onto a winner with the 323 4WD. Ford’s Sierra RS Cosworth and a Prodrive-tuned BMW M3 tried to turn the clock back to a time when rear-wheel-drive was king, but Audi’s Quattro revolution had changed the sport forever. Total traction and drive to a car’s every corner was compulsory and convincing a manufacturer to make a road-going Escort Cosworth equivalent wasn’t the work of a moment. And probably not one to slide in front of the accountants. The move to more production-based competition did, however, go down well in Japan and it wouldn’t be long before Toyota, Mitsubishi and Subaru were dominating the Group A era. That was the boom. The bust wasn’t too far behind. Close competition was driving technology and the associated costs of finding the edge ever higher. Group A had become unsustainable.

Time for a rethink. Time for a World Rally Car.

The initial numbers for a WRC looked even more onerous for manufacturers. But closer inspection revealed a slice of sheer genius. The stage-made car had to come from an initial production run of 25,000. But that 25,000 included the whole family of models and a company like SEAT was churning out considerably more than 25,000 Cordobas in every shape and form. The base engine – initially up to two-litre, but from 2011 onwards 1600cc – had to be found in at least 2,500 cars from that manufacturer. 

And, er, that’s it.

No 4x4 in the range? No problem. Buy it off the shelf from Xtrac or Prodrive, as SEAT and Skoda did. Cut the floorpan to take a couple of differentials – one in the middle and one at the rear – throw a couple of half shafts at the back, bolt on a blower and you’re good to go.

There may be some oversimplification here, but that was largely the size of the thing. Providing a manufacturer’s donor car had a steel body, the engine up front and seats for four, it was fair game. And on the outside, the more wings and the wider the arches the better. 

Manufacturers were mad for it. Three factory teams in the final year of Group A had mushroomed to seven in time for the start of the third full season of World Rally Cars in 1999. And the FIA had been smart. While making it easier and more attractive than ever to come and play with its ball, the governing body stipulated no short-cuts, no heading home early. Signing up as a World Rally Car manufacturer meant full-time World Rally Championship participation.

Subaru, Ford and Mitsubishi were the three marques that bridged Group A to World Rally Car categories, even if the British-based Ralliart team elected to stick with Group A for the Lancer until late 2001 when the Lancer WRC arrived. The WRC derivative would, however, never match the earlier Evos, which Tommi Mäkinen used to chalk up four straight drivers’ titles.

Subaru’s and Ford’s 1997 hardware was, essentially, rebadged Group A kit, but revolution wasn’t far away in the shape of the 1999 Impreza P2000 and Focus WRC respectively. Toyota’s Corolla WRC was the first all-new World Rally Car, complete with semi-auto, electronically operated gearshift (remember the joystick?). 

But the 1997 regulation change wasn’t really aimed at these titans of the sport. It was aimed at bringing SEAT and Hyundai to the table. It was aimed at offering a cost-effective way back for Peugeot (which ironically became one of the sport’s biggest spenders) and a solution allowing intra-Group competition, with Citroen joining from PSA’s red side of Paris.

And it worked and continues to work beautifully. Today’s all-singing-and-dancing 2017 cars – complete with their revised regulations allowing more aero, more power and more transmission freedom – remain World Rally Cars firmly rooted in 1997. The World Rally Championship has a lot for which to thank the World Rally Car revolution of 20 years ago. The only sad thing is that not even this straightforward, budget-savvy formula can tempt Lancia back. Not yet anyway.  

We will be celebrating the birth of the World Rally Car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard, which is now just under a month away! Tickets are still available here. Get them while you can!

Photograph courtesy of LAT Images