These days an AWD version of a small hatchback is pretty much the done thing in rallying, but that wasn’t always the case. Check out the five most unlikely rally cars that were actually a thing!
Mini Cooper
In an era where the standard for rally cars was RWD, low and sporty, someone in England must have noticed that the crazy Swedes were suddenly doing rather well in the FWD Saab 96, so decided to have a crack in something equally FWD and unlikely.
Maybe it was because the diminutive Mini was proving itself rather handy at cleaning up much larger and more powerful cars in saloon car racing at the time that it seemed to make sense to chuck it on gravel and give it a thrash there too.
And it worked. Suddenly a tiny British city car, originally conceived to be a modest form of transport for the masses was dominating rallies the world over. In fact, BMC is still the third (equal) most successful manufacturer in the British Rally Championship!
Ferrari 308 GTB
You would have to wonder what sort of psychotic masochist would one day suddenly think to themselves “I reckon a mid-engined V8 Ferrari would be a bit of fun in a rally!”. But then, it was the late 1970s, so cocaine was getting popular again.
Anyway, as unlikely as an expensive mid-engined supercar might seem as a rally car, the idea actually caught on to the degree that Ferrari dealer Michelotto of Padova actually got factory authorisation (and, apparently lots of unofficial support) to build cars to a Group 4 (and later Group B and GT/M) specification for privateers and, later, Ferrari France.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the 308 was never particularly successful as a rally car, but we imagine the sound of that glorious Italian race-tuned 3.0-litre V8 would have been simply amazing to hear on a gravel rally stage…
Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC
Imagine you are a top executive at Mercedes-Benz in the late 1970s and you decide that the company needs to get into rallying.
Most of the competition is currently of the small, light RWD variety (Fiat 131, Ford Escort RS, Porsche 911, Lancia Stratos), but you have literally nothing that fits that description. So what do you do?
That’s right; you throw all common sense out the window, take a large slug of schnapps from the bottle you keep in your desk for such decisions and chuck the large, luxurious 450SLC into the deep end of rallying, no doubt kidding yourself with the cars legendary motorsport heritage (it DID descend from the legendary W198 300SL after all).
Surprisingly, it wasn’t a complete disaster and managed to win the 1978 South American rally. And like the Ferrari, that 5.0-litre V8 would have sounded magnificent!
Rolls-Royce Corniche
While Rollers have popped up in various rallies over the years, the most unlikely is the Corniche that competed in the 1981 Paris-Dakar rally.
The result – as most things like this are – of a bet, the Rolls was the brainchild of French rally driver Thierry de Montcorge who allegedly enlisted the help (and bank account) of Christian Dior to create a proper Rolls-Royce rally car.
In reality though, there was actually little in the rally car that was Rolls-Royce – under the lightweight aluminium and composite body it was a tubular chassis fitted with the 4WD system from a Toyota Land Cruiser and powered by a small block Chevrolet V8. It DID have a genuine Rolls grille though.
Anything in R-GT that isn’t a 911
No doubt hoping to inspire the same sort of craziness that saw the likes of the Ferrari 308 and Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC go rallying in the late 1970s, the FIA recently introduced the R-GT specification. Open to 2WD GT cars with no limit on engine capacity (these really are the kind of race regulations we love…) it has so far seen such mentalness as a Lotus Exige S and an Aston Martin V8 Vantage enter its ranks.
Unfortunately the range of marques taking part has been somewhat limited, as the Porsche 911 (997) GT3 is eligible for the class, so quickly became the obvious choice and has been utterly dominating the class. Simply because it is a Porsche in a racing series. That is enough, really.
This article first appeared on Stuff Motoring!
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