In 1964 the Austin-Healey factory in Abingdon built just three works rally cars, they typically built a few each year and the cars would compete in many of the world’s biggest racing and rally events – often punching well above their weight. The standard Austin-Healey 3000 is powered by a 2912cc inline-6 with overhead valves,…
The Group B 30th Anniversary Box is the work of Ricardo Santos, a Portuguese artist and art director whose work has been featured in Top Gear Magazine, on Motorsport Retro, RACER Magazine, and a host of other top tier publications. As a former rally co-driver himself, Ricardo is fascinated with racing – particularly from the ’80s…
With its mid-mounted 4-cylinder turbo producing a hefty 386 bhp in competition trim, the Renault 5 Maxi Turbo is one of the quickest and most unusual Renaults of the 1980s. It was built as the successor to the hugely successful Alpine Renault which had dominated European rally competition until the Lancia Stratos came along and…
The Audi Sport quattro was released in 1984 as a Group B rally car and very limited production road car – strictly for homologation purposes. The Sport quattro had gigantic shoes to fill, it was the direct descendant of the supremely successful Audi Quattro – a car that was so important to Audi that they’ve…
The original Audi Quattro, retroactively named the Ur-Quattro, is almost certainly the most important vehicle ever manufactured by the German automaker. The Quattro name is still used to denote all-wheel drive cars built by Audi, but with a lowercase “Q” in deference to the original car, which almost singlehandedly changed the face of international rallying….
The story of Alpine and their 110 is one of the great David vs Goliath tales of 20th century motor racing. In 1973 the small French company Alpine took a 1-2-3 finish at the Monte Carlo Rally, and claimed outright victory in the World Rally Championship – made all the more special because it was…
Pikes Peak, Walter Röhrl, and Audi Sport Quattro S1 are three names that’ll send chills up the spine of any racing enthusiast. Combine them and you get one of the most important moments in the history of Pikes Peak and perhaps even motorsport in general – Walter Röhrl’s 600hp jaunt to the top in his…
The Porsche 911 is famous for countless things, but there are many who are unaware of the model’s early rallying dominance in some of Europe’s most challenging competitions. After its initial release in 1963 a number of both factory and privateer entries made appearances at the highest levels of international rally competition, and in 1968…
The racing exploits of the Abarth versions of the little Fiat 600 became legendary throughout the 1960s, the Austrian born Carlo Abarth seemed capable of extracting almost impossible levels of performance from the tiny Italian engine. Carlo Abarth had been born Karl Albert Abarth in Vienna in 1908, he moved to Italy as a young man…
The Lancia Delta HF Integrale Evoluzione 1 was to be the final homologation car for the Lancia Rally Team, and the crowning glory on what is now remembered as the most successful Group A car in World Rally Championship history. In total, it took 46 WRC victories, it won the Constructors Championship 6 times in…
KTM have won the motorcycle class of the Paris-Dakar every year since 2001, one of the most significant winning streaks in the history of the event. The first Paris-Dakar was run in 1978, it was organised by Thierry Sabine who realised that the desert would be a fantastic place for an endurance race – when…
By 1956 the Monte Carlo Rally was already 45 years old, and very well established as one of the world’s pre-eminent road racing events. Automobile manufacturers used it as a way to publicly show off the toughness and reliability of their vehicles, and played down the amount of mechanical work the driver and co-driver typically…
