Home > Classic > Group B Rally Cars: A Look Back - Motor Trend
In 1986, after several years of unfulfilled promise, the young Finn was a fast-rising star of the notorious Group B era, a class where power outputs went uncapped and the cars quickly evolved under the vaguest rules this side of cheese rolling. With the marshals ready to unleash the supercharged and turbocharged Lancia, co-driver Sergio Cresto reread his first few pace notes in nervous anticipation while Toivonen squirmed down in his bucket seat and braced his arms straight for the most... The cabin fizzed with a hard-edged four-pot staccato, Toivonen dropped the clutch, and the Lancia Delta S4 fired down the road, all four wheels grabbing violently at dry, uneven tarmac, catapulting the duo past lines of spectators. Group B effectively died with Toivonen and Cresto. There had been previous mumblings about safety, strongly voiced fears that the crowds were out of control, and several fans and drivers had already been killed or seriously injured: Lancia 037 driver Attilio Bettega died on the same rally one year... A Ford RS200 decimated a crowd in Portugal, with a woman and two children killed and 30 others injured. Yet still the game went on, the stakes rising with every evolution -- 400 hp here, 500 hp there, bodywork that threatened to blow off in a light breeze, and, with the Delta S4 and Ford RS200, just a lazy nod to production-car styling. Source: www.motortrend.com
