QUICK & DIRTY
As Group B rallying gave way to Group A in the late Eighties, it unleashed a new wave of rally-bred heroes. This selection can be yours for £16k each – for now – so which is the best on the road?
World rallying’s Group B years were a fiery, dramatic spectacle for the fans lining the special stages. But even before its safetyforced 1986 cancellation there was no avoiding the fact that winning on Sunday only helps if the car you sell on Monday can claim at least a droplet of competition DNA. By 1986 showroom Peugeot 205s and Lancia Deltas had nothing but their headlights in common with their Group B cousins. The ascent of Group A changed all that. Cars like the Lancia Delta Integrale, Audi quattro MB, Ford Sapphire RS Cosworth and Subaru Impreza 2000 Turbo put genuine Wrc-style hardware back in the public’s hands for the first time since bubble-arched RS Escorts and Hopkirkaccessorised Mini Coopers. Nowadays, £16k buys a well-used, privately-sold example of any one of the former. Why aren’t we recommending mint ones? Simple – hard driving on challenging roads is what they’re for, which is why we’ve brought this quartet to their old RAC Rally battleground of Dalby Forest. No car embodies the immediate post-group B era rally scene like the Lancia Delta Integrale 16v. It won every WRC for the remainder of the Eighties to the point where the lack of competition made spectating a bit dull. It wasn’t particularly surprising though – the Delta HF 4WD Turbo, as the car was called pre-1988, had existed in concept form since 1982. Lancia rally team boss Cesare Fiorio’s original plan was to dominate silhouette and production rally classes simultaneously.
Jump aboard an early Integrale and although the steering wheel’s at an awkwardly bus-like angle, the rest of the driving position is surprisingly exotic. The low-set, lightly-bolstered seats encourage a legs-straight-out posture towards closely-set pedals. A boombox-shaped instrument cluster houses busy-looking yellow dials that wave and flicker constantly, and the engine has a tuneful high pitch even at idle. The gear lever has a long, widespaced travel but feels metallic and satisfyingly mechanical. Were it not for a thick black B-pillar inches from my left temple, I could be in a Ferrari 328.
The linearity of acceleration is deeply impressive. Turbo lag was tolerated as a trade-off for a mid-range torque-surge in the Eighties, but this 16-valve version of Lampredi’s Fiat twin-cam delivers its power as though it’s normally aspirated, with just a persistent whistle reminding you of the turbocharger. Again I’m reminded of that junior Ferrari – they respond as crisply as this.
But this isn’t some delicate little sports car, it’s a wide-arched brute designed to cope with rubble and ice racing beneath its tyres. Attacking a complex of bends covered in stray gravel and swathes of mud at B-road pace reveals unshakable poise and grip, but once again there’s a tactility about the Lancia that belies its braced-for-impact image. The thin-rimmed leather-bound wheel may benefit from servo-assistance but there’s a constant stream of millimetre-fine messages fizzing up through the steering column.
Later Evo models with their broader tyres missed out on this.
What’s most impressive about the Lancia is the way that, on these forest roads, it manages to combine all these attributes so usually associated with exquisite yet fragile Italian sports cars with genuinely flawless engineering thoroughness. Turn into any bend and it’s immediately clear that the car’s mass is contained between its axles, the four-wheel drive system keeping the rear end working in harmony with the front unlike so many noseheavy hot hatches running afterthought Haldex-style part-time all-wheel drivetrains. Yet nor does it tempt you into snarling, flamboyant oversteer – its mission in life is to find the fastest, most fuss-free way through corners.
This sounds a bit clinical, more from the Sebastien Loeb school of rallying rather than that of Colin Mcrae. However, that constant sense of tactility overcomes it – the Integrale is a car that involves and informs you at all times, and even if the car does most of the work as you set what feels like a record time down your favourite local country lane, it’ll let you take the credit.
‘Only a persistent whistle reminds you of the turbocharger attached to Aurelio Lampredi’s Fiat twin-cam’
Yhadou’d be forgiven for thinking the Audi quattro was killed off by Group B’s demise. Audi was just about to replace its ageing Coupé range, and it’s often assumed that the firm withdrew from competition entirely after the tragic 1986 Tour de Corse. But it didn’t. The monstrous Group B quattros lesser-known, lower-powered Group A siblings, with drivers like Rudi Stohl, David Llewellin and John Buffum pitting the familiar bricklike shape against the Lancia Delta Integrale, admittedly with nowhere near the success of its short-wheelbase predecessor. Like the Integrale it looked prehistoric by this point with its bluff, cubist lines, but the original quattro soldiered on until 1991 by which point its 80-based successor had actually been on sale for three years. You sit slightly reclined, arms out straight towards a tiny, leftoffset wheel and a digital dashboard that looks more likely to challenge you to a game of Galaxian than tell you your speed. Turn the key and it all erupts in a blaze of lurid orange numbers and graphs underpinned by five-cylinder gargle and turbo hum. Sitting stationary with the clutch down, I wrist-éick my way through the gearbox. Slicker than the Integrale’s, it promises compliance. Pull away, and you’re rewarded with an angry hammering snarl, but no low-down urge. The quattro does nothing below 3000rpm, then a giant hairdryer starts to roar from beyond the dashboard and all 199lb ft seems to arrive in one slightly unmanageable lump. Although it’s accompanied by an intoxicating noise, these are the characteristics of a modern turbodiesel.
‘The cornering style feels like a challenge to master rather than run away from’
It doesn’t take long on a winding road for the quattro to reveal its one major shortcoming. Far from being the limitless dispatcher of B-roads it appeared to be alongside wayward Talbot Sunbeamlotuses, Ford Escort RS2000S and Opel Asconas upon launch, it’s outclassed by the Integrale when the going gets twisty.
A hard turn-in swiftly overwhelms the front tyres’ grip, thanks to the heavy longitudinal engine mounted so far forward the radiator had to be displaced to the side. As the nose ploughs forwards, I follow front-drive practice by backing off the throttle in an attempt to pull it back into line, but when the weight shifts backwards the rear end behaves like that of a rear-drive car cornering on a trailing throttle, and steps out. While the Integrale’s concentration of weight between its axles makes it handle like a giant grippy Mini, the quattro makes it through bends in an ungainly juggle of understeer and oversteer.
With the quattro’s warning shot duly fired, I find myself adopting a cautious driving technique once onto faster moorland sweepers. I start planning corners further ahead, edging the car through each bend with gentle, leaning increments rather than sudden movements. Do this, avoid decelerating, and the quattro allows you to keep its serrated five-pot over the magic 3000rpm.
A-road progress becomes rapid, and it’s easy to see how the leather-lined Audi appealed to business types looking for a crosscountry express. But the nose-heavy feeling, the sense that you’re clinging to the handle of Thor’s hammer with only limited control over its direction never relents, and serves to keep any quattro pilot on their toes.
Although it was superannuated by 1988, the quattro was still to be respected rather than feared. The balancing-slip-angles cornering style lends weight to Walther Röhrl’s comment that ‘only three other people could really drive them properly’ (Hannu Mikkola, Michèle Mouton and Stig Blomqvist, presumably), and it feels like a challenge to master rather than run away from.
Also, never forget that it’s the original; the pioneer. While it was a familiar presence by the time of Group B’s demise, back in 1981 both road testers and rally reporters alike labelled it an unreliable experimental car, with a constant question mark hanging over it as it challenged the Seventies groupthink of light weight, rear-drive and tentative moves towards balancing engine nose-weight with rear transaxle gearboxes.
It may have been a handful, but once mastered the quattro systematically sliced straight through bends while its competitors snapped dramatically but inefficiently sideways. With all Wrc-winning cars since 1987 being front-engined and four-wheel drive, it’s clear the quattro was right all along – even if it was a bit rough round the edges.
The sight of any Ford Sierra Sapphire RS Cosworth nowadays is an alarming reminder of how long ago the late Eighties and early Nineties actually are. Like fluorescent green Emmelle mountain bikes and Phil Cool videos, they were a regular fixture at conifer-lined dark-brick ‘executive’ newbuilds back then. Nowadays Acacia Avenue is Bmw-land, but back then the Germans could only dream of emulating Ford’s mass-market reach. In 1987 the Sapphire moved Ford’s tanks confidently onto what’s now the 3 Series’ manicured lawn. All it took was a three-box, four-door remodelling of the Sierra including a traditional radiator grille, an interior full of squashy black leather and a halo model with a magic name straight from the paddock – Cosworth. The turbocharged Sapphire was kept deliberately subtle for suburbia with a modest wing compared to its three-door Sierra cousin, but it hid secret ammunition for the post-conference row in the Harvester bar – it was actually a few miles per hour faster thanks to reduced drag. On board this mint 1991 example, everything emits a harsh, cheap buzz from the moment the starter motor catches. However, the car’s priorities are obvious when I’m ensconced in the excellent Recaro driving seat – the posture is perfect. At rest, the gear lever feels so long as to be incongruous, but it puts the gearknob within easy reach of the wheelrim and its travel is shorter than expected. Foot to the floor, the Cosworth YB turbocharged four-cylinder does suffer some lag but nowhere near as much as the Audi, the telltale whistle and surge starting at 2000rpm and a vigorous shove kicking in just 500rpm later. Like the Integrale there’s a crispness to the throttle response, a reminder that this wasn’t a mere mass-produced lump with a turbocharger strapped on as per so many early-eighties tunerspecials. Again, it’s a sign of Boreham’s acutely focused priorities.
The brake pedal lacks feel and is strangely short-travel – almost Citroënesque – in operation, but the brakes themselves are reassuringly powerful. However, the RS’S best quality is its steering. Unique in this company in being unencumbered by burdensome halfshafts, it communicates consistently through the fat-rimmed wheel, admittedly with a meaty writhe rather than a Lotus-style sizzle.
With slight, progressive roll angles and a surprisingly absorbent ride, driving the Sapphire Cosworth is a joyfully interactive calland-response exercise rather than an extension-of-the-body experience. Punch the wheel into a corner or kick the accelerator, feel the car react gradually, then prepare for the onslaught of acceleration and oversteer. In fact, it feels like a long-wheelbase Porsche 944 Turbo. You feel the extra length of its wheelbase in a slight stubbornness at the helm when piling into more severe lower-speed bends, but the sense of being at one with the car is far more evident behind the blue oval than the four rings.
On the rally stage things weren’t quite so rosy. The Group B era had been painful for Ford – its all-conquering Escort RS2000 and the expensive yet untried RS1700T were unceremoniously blown away by the Audi quattro, and just as the long-gestated RS200
finally came good with Mark Lovell winning the 1986 British Rally Championship, it was banned with the rest of its Group B ilk.
Alongside Audi, Ford provided most of the Integrale’s competition in the late Eighties, but Ford’s approach was erratic. For some rallies – especially European tarmac events – it would show up with a mixture of Sierra Cosworth three-doors, RS Sapphires and V6 Xr4x4s spread across multiple classes to test their effectiveness. Eventually – via a four-wheel drive version of the Sapphire RS – the tactic spawned a short-wheelbase test mule that morphed into the Escort Cosworth of the Nineties.
Although it only notched up one world rally victory – the 1988 Tour de Corse with Didier Auriol – the Sapphire Cosworth was always the crowd-pleaser, a gleeful foil to the po-faced Martinilancia and Castrol-toyota operations. Malcolm Wilson and Jimmy Mcrae would hold running bets on the number of panels young Colin could leave undented in his during his early RAC Rally forays. And that’s still the kind of car it is today – forget the cheap finish and the acid-house joyrider image it picked up later on - it’ll put a broader grin on your face than any other car here.
‘The acceleration and progressive oversteer make it feel like a longwheelbase Porsche 944 Turbo’
Vnissan ariants of the Integrale, Sierra and quattro fought for top-level WRC honours from 1987-92. In 1992 Lancia took the manufacturers’ title for the sixth consecutive season – by then the Integrale was a five-year-old version of a 13-year-old car, but it was still unstoppable on gravel. Even younger pretenders like the Opel Calibra 4x4, Mazda 323 GT-X and Sunny GTI-R couldn’t match it. Then, for 1993, perennial underachiever Subaru debuted an all-new car – the Impreza 2000 Turbo – to replace its hefty Legacy RS. Ari Vatanen immediately drove it to second place in the 1000 Lakes, and a new era dawned. Then Colin Mcrae nearly won the season-ending RAC Rally until an encounter with a rock halted his run. This brought something else – an unexpected surge of British rally fans through the doors of Subaru dealerships more used to flogging off-roaders to the Barbour-and-shotguns crowd. The Subaru’s UK appeal didn’t just lie in the guts-and-glory drives of its Scottish pilot. The Lancia was hampered by its lefthand drive and half-hearted dealer network, the Audi cost £30k in 1988 and, thanks to poor security measures plus a crime epidemic amid escalating unemployment and a recession, the Ford was effectively uninsurable. By contrast the Subaru cost £17,500 – almost ten grand less than the Sapphire Cosworth 4x4 – and promised the kind of solid dependability farmers swore by. To the uninitiated it still looks nothing special. The exterior is Corolla-bland, livened only with brutishly functional scoops and vents, and the interior is plagued with the kind of shiny
‘Everything about its character is geared towards unpretentious – but not unsophisticated – urge’
wipe-clean fake leather favoured by late-night minicab drivers. The rather unsupportive driver’s seat doesn’t go back quite enough to accommodate my legs comfortably, or descend to avoid the sense that I’m sitting on rather than in it. However, something transformative happens the second I touch the contoured handgrips of the Momo wheel and turn the ignition key.
With one of the most distinctive exhaust notes of modern times throbbing through the cabin, the Impreza gets underway smoothly with a progressive, friendly clutch bite, making it an easy car to get to know, then drive fast. As the revs soar upwards, the Impreza squats, grips and hurtles relentlessly forward. Everything about its character is geared towards unpretentious – but not unsophisticated – urge. The pulsating, ever-present torque of the turbocharged flat-four means that any attempts to sustain 30mph will see it creeping up to 40 the way most shopping cars apologetically offer 31. I’m reminded of the puppyish, goading antics of the Peugeot 205 GTI, but with considerably more power, and carrying far more speed should things go wrong.
But in the corners the Impreza distinguishes itself through sophistication and interactivity. So many Japanese performance cars of the early Nineties offered up endless grip and flat cornering so efficient that they felt limitless yet dull. In the Impreza, while the front tyres grip hard, the rears scrabble and kick, encouraging you to attempt a powerslide.
However, unlike the uncertainty of the quattro, Subaru learnt from Ingolstadt’s mistakes. There’s a limited-slip differential on the rear axle and 60% of the torque from the turbocharged flat-four engine is sent to the front wheels, so it will dutifully pull itself back in line if you back off the accelerator. And will stand itself on its nose if you hit the short-travel brake pedal.
Such behaviour makes the Impreza feel animalistic and raw – and you, as the driver, heroic and skilled – but it actually shows how lightly the Subaru wears its technology. Nissan Skylines and later iterations of Mitsubishi Lancer Evos will perform in a similar way, but communicate their performance via graphs on a dashboard screen rather than cold sweat at the base of the spine.
It doesn’t cruise comfortably like the Ford or Audi though. Aside from its reluctance to ‘sit’ at sensible speeds, it jiggles constantly on its suspension. It’s all part of the way the Subaru communicates with its driver, warning them when it’s on the verge of losing traction, and that’s exactly how Colin Mcrae would’ve wanted it. As a result, the nervous, wired, playful Impreza confers its own demeanour onto its driver – and doesn’t apologise.
‘As drivers’ cars they’re remarkably different, but the Lancia strikes the best balance between civilised and exotic’
All these cars are icons. Picture a Lancia Delta Integrale and it’s in Martini livery, high-tailing a mile of dust through Greece. It’s a similar story with the Subaru Impreza Turbo, in 555 blue-and-gold with Mcrae at the wheel, clipping apexes and errant boulders with abandon while Welshmen cheer from soggy forest vantage points. The Audi quattro’s appeal is spread even more broadly, existing firstly in a Tangerine Dream-soundtracked world of early Eighties German technology-led high design, then via rally heroics to pop-culture with Ashes To Ashes. The world of the Ford Sapphire RS Cosworth is more peculiarly British, as synonymous with law and disorder as rallying. Coppers drove them and there’s no avoiding their popularity among joyriders in the lawless, Ecstasy-fuelled early Nineties.
But as drivers’ cars they’re remarkably different. The Impreza is best for a B-road thrash but will give you a headache over long distances, although nowadays it's by far the cheapest with good cars out there for less than £5000. Our theoretical £16,000 will buy a show-winner, with change.
The Audi, by contrast, is still the most expensive. It sets any driver a 911-style physics challenge, but that’s half the fun. Our £16k will bag a scruffily sound high-miler. It’ll buy you a better-presented, though still well-used Sapphire Cosworth, which by comparison is relatively plentiful and a bargain compared to its three-door sister model. Don’t expect it to stay that way though.
However, the Lancia Delta Integrale wins. No car before it combined genuine four-wheel-drive rallying ruggedness with the kind of delicate, finely-adjustable tactility you’d expect of a delicate Italian sports car, and the result is a perfect balance of civilised and exotic. The best pre-evo models might be pushing £20k, but £16k for a privately sold, 100k-odd miler is still realistic.
The fact that it also manages to exude the enigma of a Maserati while being a five-door family hatchback must make it unique. ‘Integrale’ – ordinary yet beautiful Italian – means ‘whole’ or ‘complete’. A name has rarely been so fitting.
Thanks to: Forestry Commission (forestry.gov.uk), Walkers Lancia (walkers-garage. co.uk), the Quattro Owners’ Club (quattroownersclub.com), and The GTR Shop (thegtrshop.com). Denise Hodgkinson’s Ford Sapphire RS Cosworth is for sale at £19,995 (call 07043 228328)