THE RALLY SPECIALS
It’s official, rally specials make awesome road cars... question is, can the upstart GR Yaris show up a gathering of all time greats?
We know that the new Toyota GR Yaris is a great car, but how does it hold up in comparison to some of its most illustrious ancestors from the world of rallying?
Homologation Stupid word Responsible for some of the most exciting cars ever to have turned a wheel and yet ‘homologation’ You can’t abbreviate it go on try you can’t make it sound sexy or cool again have a go Maybe attempt a French accent and it’s bloody hard to even describe to people what it is Don’t try Seriously just say ‘road racer’ or ‘rally replica’ and move on change the subject Do not get into what I’m about to go into That way lies nothing but social pariahdom Let me be your guide And to compound your pain I’m going to start with a lesson I know back to school time although here the three Rs are Racing Road cars and Regulations Now let’s do some ’rithmetic and write each at the corner of an equilateral triangle Look they’re in balance Pull one corner away from the others and argh! Isosceles What I’m getting at with my terrifyingly loose grip on education is this regulations exist to keep road and racing in balance Let racing loose and costs spear upwards and let’s introduce a fourth ‘R’ here relevance declines In basic terms this is what happens the regulators tell the firms that in order for them to compete in whatever class they’ll need to build X number of road cars Now the race/rally cars can be further modified but certain things won’t be able to be changed the chassis engine block bodyshell suspension pickup points maybe It varies This reassures manufacturers that the playing field is level it stops costs spiralling and it helps us legitimately associate Colin’s Impreza with the one in the dealership And makes us want one very badly indeed Everyone’s a winner And from the early Seventies to the late Nineties this is how rally car homologation worked Why rally cars specifically? Because of how well they translate to road use I know that seems odd given they’re designed to tackle mud snow and gravel and maybe says something about the state of British roads but actually the elements that make a good rally car from field of view to compact size to supple suspension chime perfectly with what works well on the kinds of roads we love to drive on Looked at this way rally homologation cars are the ultimate road cars
So what we have here is a lineage an arc of cars that span the period It’s by no means comprehensive there’s no Mitsubishi Lancer Peugeot T Metro R not even a Lancia Delta Integrale the era’s most successful rally car which won six championships in the late Eighties and early Nineties Apologies COVID makes things tricky But look at what we do have an original midengined Renault Turbo a car that would inspire the Group B monsters that followed And from that era Audi’s short wheelbase Sport quattro and Ford’s fearsome fresh-sheet-of-paper RS From the Group A regs that replaced them we have the Subaru Impreza WRX STi Type RA a car whose name is one long rally acronym World Rally eXperimental Type Rally Application and the Toyota Celica GT-Four WRC the forerunner of the GR Yaris .
And what of Toyota’s latest project? Homologation car or not? Yes absolutely the first type approved rally special we’ve seen for over years Why so long? Well back in the FIA changed the regulations to make the WRC attractive to more marques The road/rally car synergy was abandoned for a more silhouette-based approach it had to be based on an everyday mass market model but that was about it So Ford Skoda Citroen Hyundai and VW piled in with their standard superminis and the nearest we got to a homologation special was when Peugeot wanted to compete with the but it was cm too short to meet the four metre minimum Solution fit fat bumpers to a regular GTi call it the GT and shift of them pronto to legitimise it .
But building a di erent bodyshell entirely? Next level stu And that’s what sets the GR Yaris apart not the world’s most powerful production threecylinder turbo nor the WD system claimed to be the lightest on the market None of that will be used on the WRC version where the technical package is tight and prescriptive That means gaining any advantage is di cult so aero has become a key battleground What you really want is a dipping roofline that doesn’t block air getting to the rear wing and no rear doors as if you have them you’re not allowed to fit aero aids to them But who wants a supermini with no rear doors or headroom? Especially when to
qualify for WRC you’ll have to shift of them No one that’s who Unless you do the job properly and make it so much of a tiny tearaway that people really won’t give a hoot about practicality Given that no one has done anything like it for decades it’s a definite leap into the unknown
It was due to race this year but then COVID stepped in and the regulation change was pushed back to when WRC also goes hybrid Will the GR Yaris ever grace a WRC stage? Let’s hope so But in the meantime let’s celebrate a car with genuine rally pedigree Other WD turbo hotshoes from the Focus RS to Merc’s A suggest they have but to drive them is to know the truth they’re pretenders A homologation special needs to be more individual to have a sense it’s been created at the behest of rally regs first road use second The Yaris manages that just Not only in its roofline but also in the torquey eagerness of its power delivery the turn in grip and traction It’s a compelling little thing because it has flaws Although I hardly think short gearing a bit of road noise and sti springs are detrimental It’s refreshing because it’s not trying to cover all the bases
Around Millbrook’s hill route it’s a crackerjack You sit much higher than in any of the old cars but that’s the way rallying has gone driver high for visibility co driver low for centre of gravity It also shows how far things have come It’s the fastest car here Bet you weren’t expecting that But none of the others not even the bhp Audi are as rapid It would be a fascinating drag race which I reckon the Yaris Impreza and Sport quattro would duke out but throw in some corners and the Yaris walks away from them Modern tyres and brakes obviously make a huge di erence but what the Yaris mainly shows is how far turbos and WD systems have developed Boy were they crude back in the day
Just look at the turbo plumbing of the Ford RS The litre’s blower sits well outside the engine on the o side Air comes in is pressurised by the turbo then goes up across the roof where it passes through the intercooler then back down into the engine No wonder there’s lag No wonder that even once you’re through that the engine hardly delivers a hammer blow of power It sort of hu s along its sweet spot like the Audi’s from rpm But then this wasn’t a race engine Oh no And to tell you more about that we need a history lesson
You see the grandaddy of all these cars is the Lancia Stratos When that appeared in it was the first purpose designed homologated rally car There were built to satisfy Group regs and it won the manufacturers championship three years on the bounce No wonder everyone else wanted in on the action Especially Renault seeing as the Alpine A had been a rallying front runner before Lancia turned up
So the French set to work on the little supermini With some Italian assistance design house Bertone was engaged to help out and suggested putting the engine in the middle driving the rear wheels Just like the Stratos Which funnily enough it’d also had a hand in Instead of a Ferrari sourced Dino V Renault an early adopter of turbocharging took the sportiest ’s bhp litre and
“NO ONE WAS WORRIED ABOUT THE ARRIVAL OF A BIG, HEAVY AUDI. OOPS”
boosted it to bhp for the road car It needed to sell which didn’t prove to be an issue In fact this mid engined hot hatch ended up such a hit that Renault would build of them Then it did a cheaper Turbo that did away with some of the more specialised components and the outrageous cabin
I had no idea about this I guess it’s what happens when it’s the late Seventies and you employ Bertone and say you only need a handful built You get a concept car There was nothing in the regs that said you had to have an interior as louche and artful as a Riviera nightclub but here it is anyway complete with admittedly aftermarket roof mounted stereo and asymmetric two spoke steering wheel It’s surprisingly comfortable to hold The seats? They’re like that because the fuel tank is underneath
What a thing to drive though I was convinced it was going to be terrifying a spiky vindictive turbo mated to an all too brief chassis with the weight distribution of a pendulum Couldn’t be more wrong It’s a joy Less lag and better spread of power than either the Audi or RS that came along over four years later and handling that is smooth compliant and way better balanced than I’d anticipated Good though it is it doesn’t seem a natural rally car not given what followed
The weird thing is that no one thought WD would work This might have something to do with rallying being dominated at the time by the Italians and French who were more tarmac focused Certainly no one was worried about the arrival of a big heavy Audi that was powered by a five cylinder turbo engine mounted so far forward it was basically a battering ram Oops In a move broadly unnoticed and rumoured to have been at Audi’s behest FISA forerunner to the FIA changed the regulations in to permit four wheel drive The next year Audi sent a development car in the hands of Hannu Mikkola to the Algarve rally in Portugal to act as a course car Had it been competing it would have won by minutes
This was a car don’t forget that hadn’t been designed or even much modified for competition But Audi wasted no time capitalising on its advantage The quattro took three wins in its debut season and won the championship the following year But in its success was the seed of its own downfall
In FISA introduced the infamous Group B category It was done in the hope of adding glamour and excitement to rallying by encouraging firms to follow in the footsteps of the Stratos and build something unique And this time rather than
having to build cars you would only have to build Plus with Renault having proved the benefits of small capacity turbo engines by using its forced induction experience from F the was producing bhp and Audi having demonstrated WD’s strengths the template for speed was clear And the rules were very open It had to have a closed cockpit with two seats side by side That was about it Minimum weight and tyre widths were governed by your engine displacement Got a turbo? Your engine capacity was multiplied by so Renault’s was classified a etc Naturally everyone came up with the same thing turbocharged and WD in a compact midengined body And then made full use of a subclause that said once you’d built road cars ‘evolution’ cars could be built each year provided the basic template didn’t change Wings sprouted turbos expanded like over-jammed donuts because turbo size didn’t a ect the engine/weight calculation and in the space of three years power outputs went from bhp to over bhp The cars still weighed around kg Speed?
Yep they had that alright This left Audi with a problem It had invested too much to abandon the quattro yet the far forward engine meant it was neither nimble nor well balanced So in it launched the Sport quattro mm had been cut out of the wheelbase the front track width was up mm bodywork was mostly formed out of Kevlar and fibreglass and the engine block was alloy rather than iron shedding kg As a road car this bhp coupe was vastly overengineered And surprisingly civilised This is not the animal you may have been led to believe Inside there’s leather chrome and ‘design’ and the only sporting feature is what looks like a choke knob that’s the di lock control The engine is calm and good natured has a healthier midrange than the Ford and a punchier top end too A mph time of secs meant it was one of the very fastest cars on sale years ago Today it’s hot hatch pace Just with way
“A ROAD CAR IN NAME ONLY, THE RS200 IS CLANKY AND CRAMPED”
more natural charisma Chassis and steering aren’t aggressive the front wheels seem a long way ahead and the rears basically under your arse Nimble? Nah still quite nose led but once the front has grip it doesn’t easily relinquish it you just need to keep the power on The engine warbles pleasingly the turbo hisses gently you can make good progress But the best thing about it is the way it looks It may not have been very successful and it’s physically tiny these days but no wonder this is the car people think of when Group B is mentioned
Compare and contrast with the froggy unfinished RS A road car in name only it’s clanky cramped and ramshackle The footwell is tiny rough carpet covers bare metal and just look at the panel fit the bonnet overlaps the A pillars by an inch Built by Reliant due to its fibreglass expertise which might explain a few things People who bought them must have wondered what they’d got themselves into It may have a lightweight space frame chassis and twin dampers at each corner but the car feels loose
and edgy when you back o and it’s only when you have pressure in the di s that it comes together Overall there’s a sense the RS never received the development that was owed to it Welcome to Group B it placed so much emphasis on racing that the road cars could be forgotten about
It didn’t help that Ford had to change tack at the last minute It’d been planning a development of the Escort before Group B came along so was on the back foot when others especially Peugeot with its T hit the ground running It wasn’t until that the RS was good to go It promised much Designed by two F engineers it was low light mid engined and with the gearbox at the front seemed the best balanced Group B car of all It never got much of a chance to show what it was capable of A third place on Rally Sweden in February was its best result
The following round Portugal was to be the beginning of the end for Group B An RS driven by Joaquim Santos left the road and went into a crowd killing three and injuring Two months later rising star Henri Toivonen crashed on the Tour de Corse his Lancia Delta S tumbling into a ravine and bursting into flames on impact Both he and his co driver Sergio Cresto were killed
And that was the end Audi and Ford withdrew immediately the class itself died at the end of the year The monsters had an afterlife Metro R s and RS s began popping up on the rallycross circuit Peugeot took the technology to the Paris Dakar event Audi did the same with Pikes Peak But rallying itself was changed
What happened next was partially farcical Behind the scenes firms had complained Group B was too expensive the road cars had been costly to develop and build then hard to sell hardly surprising given the crudity of some and rumours abounded of R s being flogged o for Instead a prototype class Group S was in the works specialist rally cars do away with homologation completely but make them slower with restrictors limiting power to around bhp Arguments wrangled back and forth but in the end the top tier was just chopped away and the next class down Group A came to the fore
Bar Lancia most European marques withdrew and up to the plate stepped the Japanese It would take Subaru and Mitsubishi a few years to catch on but in the meantime Mazda and more pertinently Toyota got serious about rallying Group A regs dictated that road cars had to be built reduced to in and mods were restricted Unable to resort to power for speed engineers focused on the chassis Within three years the cars were faster through stages than the Group B machines Yes really
Three generations of Celica competed the ST and This is the latter in full house WRC trim It arrived in trying to recapture past glories In the hands of such stellar talents as Juha Kankkunen and Carlos Sainz its predecessor had won four driver titles and two manufacturer titles across Toyota threw the kitchen sink at this last of the line version water spray for the intercooler taller rear wing spars twin scroll turbo ‘Super Strut’ suspension and anti lag plumbing As far as rallying goes it only gave it a year But as a road car this is something of an unsung hero
Even by quarter of a century newer GR Yaris standards there’s not much turbo lag the steering is gorgeous the whole car eager together and crisp to drive After the slight disappointment of the Group B era road cars which are rich in experience and drama less
“TOYOTA THREW THE KITCHEN SINK AT THIS LASTOF-THE-LINE VERSION”
“NO ONE WORKED THE DETAIL AS MUCH AS SUBARU”
so in proficiency things are getting together Group A regs which force firms to think creatively and in detail about what can be done worked better as a development strategy for road cars
And no one worked the detail as much as Subaru It had got into national rallying in the Eighties but it wasn’t until the arrival of the Impreza in that things gathered momentum I’m going to simplify the ludicrous complexity of the annually updated models that followed WRX was the ‘everyday’ version initially powered by a bhp flat four turbo STi variants which followed in focused on performance enhancements The Type RA designation was rally specific and mainly about weight loss It wasn’t needed for WRC homologation but it was ideal for lower tier rallying Aircon and sound deadening were junked window winders made a comeback there was no ABS and the gearbox had a shorter final drive It is perhaps the most rally ready production car any firm has ever built
And that’s what it feels like as soon as you get moving in it Light small and supple It moves easily over the ground despite taut aftermarket suspension That’s at odds with the steering the big wheel initially feeling loose and inert in your hands All part of the design less kickback on rough surfaces when the wheel is straight As soon as you get some lock on everything tightens up and the Impreza immediately gains focus and intent For breathless sprinting it’s awesome the gearthrow tight and short the power band always there And it’s not noisy Not on its original pea shooter pipes at least Great seats and with the roof vent open properly atmospheric For a good time on a B road this is the one
Only it isn’t because I reckon the latest GR Yaris actually has the measure of them all In one upright nose heavy package it manages to cram enough guts and gumption to convince as a rally replica It might not have the mechanical authenticity of those that went before and it lacks the characterful clanks shunts and hissing lag But then look at modern rally cars They’re not crude I don’t know how much Tommi Mäkinen and the rally team genuinely had to do with it but that relationship feels real
And what we like about all of these what homologation has given us is cars with purpose meaning and clarity cars with intricate engineering and competition pedigree Normal cars no matter how fast or exclusive are the result of careful planning marketing and strategy How dull These were forged in the heat of battle Without homologation Renault would never have put the engine in the back of a Audi would never have chopped a foot out the middle of a quattro the RS would never have been so much as a sketch on a drawing board the Celica and Impreza would never have been more than moderately interesting semi sports cars Rallying has given them all a story Let’s hope that the GR Yaris gets to tell one of its own
“WHAT WE LIKE ABOUT ALL OF THESE, WHAT HOMOLOGATION HAS GIVEN US, IS CARS WITH PURPOSE AND COMPETITION PEDIGREE”