DriveTimes Five
Highly unlikely (but real) rally cars
While Emma Gilmour’s Suzuki Swift is a fairly common choice for a modern rally car, there have been a few over the years that have been a wee bit more, shall we say, unconventional. Like these five, for example.
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. 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 masochist would one day suddenly think to themselves: ‘‘I reckon a midengined V8 Ferrari would be a bit of fun in a rally!’’. But then, it was the late-1970s, so cocaine was getting popular again. Unlikely as an expensive midengined rally-supercar might seem, the idea actually caught on to the degree that Ferrari dealer Michelotto of Padova 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. 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 450 SLC into the deep end of rallying, no doubt kidding yourself with the car’s 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. Like the Ferrari, that 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 event. The result – as these things often 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.
Non-911 R-GT cars
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 the likes of the 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 racing. Simply because it is a Porsche in a racing series. That’s enough, really.