Driving Henri Toivonen’s 1984 1000 Lakes Lancia 037
This 037 won Henri Toivonen his full-time Lancia contract and a shot at the World Rally Championship, following a storming drive on the 1984 1000 Lakes. With no speed limits in sight, we drive it at maximum attack...
We felt we needed another top driver, so Henri Toivonen has been added to the team and will do five events,’ said Lancia team boss Cesare Fiorio at its annual press conference in December 1983. ‘Audi will have four top drivers next year so it would be very difficult competing with only two. We will review our position after that.’
It was an unexpected announcement. Less than two months earlier, Toivonen had been reconsidering his future as he effortlessly put a Canon-sponsored Richard Lloyd Racing Porsche 956 on pole for the Mugello 1000km and, along with Jonathan Palmer and Derek Bell, had brought it home in second place behind a Lancia LC2. In July 1982 he tested March’s 821 F1 car and posted a time round a soggy Silverstone 1.4 seconds quicker than March’s works driver Raul Boesel. A true multi-disciplinary driver – 1977 Finnish Formula Vee Champion, no less – Toivonen had options away from the rally stage. Which was just as well, because he was building a reputation for recklessness on it, his drives firstly for Talbot and then, David Richards’ Rothmans Opel team either securing valuable points or resulting in a smashed wreck. His Lancia drives would run concurrently with a European Rally Championship campaign in Rothmans’ new Porsche 911 SCRS.
Perhaps I feel as nervous as Toivonen himself as I climb on board this 037, which Toivonen drove on his third and, as it would transpire, final rally of 1984. Toivonen only got one test-drive in an 037 – at a snowbound La Mandria in January 1984 – before his season began. I’ve driven several rally cars before, but never a full works rally-spec Group B machine, and its reputation precedes it. Every rally fan knows about the deadly crashes these unrestrained, prototypic machines were responsible for, especially the one that killed Toivonen himself on the 1986 Tour de Corse.
Thankfully the driving position is roomy and sports saloon-like courtesy of the Lancia Montecarlo-derived central section. Before firing the engine I take the gearbox for a dry run and it feels reassuringly hot-hatch smooth. But just before I reach for the starter button, I look up at the close header rail. From a distance, the 037 looks slick and space-capsule-like, but get closer and you start to see rough-cut Kevlar edges and uneven dribbles of weld around the tubular structure plastered-over with white paint. It’s not as hightech and solid as it looked in fuzzy Eighties Vhs-vision. More like a homespun club-sport racer that needs rebuilding after every race.
I hit the button. Behind my seat, the 2111cc, high-compression supercharged 325bhp Aurelio Lampredi twin-cam bursts into life with a nervous, high-pitched strum. I can just-about detect the signature fizz of the Fiat engine; in reality the only Lancia parts of this car are the badges, and they’re outnumbered by Abarth ones – including on the dashboard instruments and in the middle of the steering wheel – betraying its real origins.
Accelerate, and it builds to a brittle metallic shriek strongly reminiscent of an enormous Grand Prix motorbike of the 500cc
‘Toivonen only got one test-drive in an 037 before his season began’
two-stroke era. Unlike its predecessor, the Stratos, there’s not much by way of thumping low-down torque to thrust the car off the line. Rather, you have to work the engine hard. It doesn’t want to do anything below 3000rpm. Release the clutch any lower than that and it’ll crawl away like a pensioner’s Honda Jazz. Allow the revs to fall below that level while you’re knitting together a series of bends and it’ll bog down in a manner which, if it happened on a rally stage, would cost you vital seconds and points.
After his La Mandria test-drive, Toivonen said the 037 drove more like a Group C Porsche 956 than any other rally car he’d tried before. His incumbent Opel Ascona followed the tough old front-engined, rear-drive approach in the mould of the successful Ford Escort, with 50/50 weight distribution on offer and easilycontrolled power oversteer. But looking at the 037, all its weight appears to sit in the tail. Lift the flimsy, vibrating nose panel and it just reveals sparse and lightweight chassis tubing. Group C cars are single-minded machines designed for racing drivers to nail fast, precise laps on dry, sticky tarmac. But rally cars have to deal with all manner of surfaces including the loose gravel I’m driving on today. Surely it’s easy to lose control and spin it?
Perhaps not. Engine warmed up, gaining confidence with its peaky power delivery, I turn in hard to a sharp left-hand bend on cold, cracked asphalt. Surprisingly, the nose remains planted as though there’s more weight-induced traction available than the 42.7/57.3 front/rear reality suggests, tracking true to its line. There’s a sense of instant familiarity to this reassuringly solid yet tactile steering that I’ve felt before not only in Lancia Delta Integrales, but also when pressing on in my old ‘widebody’ Alfa Romeo 155TS 16v. There is a common denominator here – development engineer Giorgio Pianta. Cars with his fingerprints on them all tend to feature stocky, wide wheels beneath bulging box-arches, asymetrically-patterned tyres, and stiffly-sprung touring-carstyle suspension that give a jiggly ride but ensure the widestpossible contact patch of the tyre remains stuck to the road while also reducing body roll to mere milimetres. Usefully, there’s also enough length in its wheelbase to minimise fears of mid-corner twitchiness. I feel confident to push it harder through corners than expected, but there’s that persistent fear that if any sudden bump or moment of overenthusiasm shifted momentum to the rear, the tail-heavy 037 would shoot away from the apex backwards in an uncontrollable cloud of tyre smoke. Wide tyres don’t tend to break grip progressively enough to be caught gently when they slide.
It is worth pointing out that this particular 037 is an Evoluzione II, the highest state of the car’s development to be deployed in rallies before the turbo- and supercharged four-wheel-drive Delta S4 replaced it. The gearbox got an oil cooler, but more crucially for the handling, the rear valance was removed to minimise the overhang as well as improving service access to the sportsprototype-style rear-mounted longitudinal gearbox, and the car gained F1-style blade-shaped suspension wishbones.
‘Toivonen said the 037 drove more like a Porsche 956 than any other rally car’
The brakes are superb too. The pedal is short-travel and uncommunicative, but the discs’ bite is mighty and reassuring. Forget worries of competition brakes that haven’t been warmed-up properly needing stamping on to bring it to anything other than a squealing, overshot halt – the 037 stops like a roadgoing Integrale.
However, despite any apparent friendliness, it’s still a tricky car to drive fast. The sheer peakiness of that rasping, screaming supercharged engine has me constantly thinking about engine
‘With a trail of broken cars behind him, Toivonen climbed into this 037 and kept Stig Blomqvist’s Audi Quattro off the podium’
speed, prodding the throttle to keep it in its power band with every gearchange. Although it’s almost Lotus-light, it’s a heavy-feeling car thanks to the wide front tyres and unassisted steering, which taxes shoulder muscles after a morning attacking hairpins. Visibility is excellent compared with most mid-engined cars thanks to the thin pillars and low waistline, but this also streams sunlight into the cabin, boiling the interior, which is kept on a steady simmer by the presence of the supercharger’s plumbing behind the driver’s seat.
So how did Toivonen fare as a new Lancia driver in 1984? Audi’s 1984 lineup was stellar. Hannu Mikkola was the defending World Champion. Stig Blomqvist was the reigning British Rally Champion. Michele Mouton was a multiple rally winner with a Le Mans class win to her name too. And Audi had just swiped Lancia’s star 037 driver, two-times World Rally Champion Walter Röhrl, as well.
The season began ominously for Lancia. Quattros filled the podiums in Monte Carlo and Sweden, and just before Toivonen’s debut in Portugal Peugeot unveiled the 205 T16. This was the first time Toivonen had driven an 037 in hot, dry conditions and admitted that he didn’t know where its limits were. He attacked the tarmac, leading for the first five stages before crashing at Peninha.
By the time Toivonen next drove the 037, on the Acropolis Rally, Lancia had all but given up hope of retaining the World Rally Championship. Peugeot as well as Audi kept the 037s from the podium, the 205 T16 demonstrating immediate prowess. Work on the S4 continued in secret, but Toivonen had to make do with two-wheel drive. He was fast, winning the Neohorio stage, but an organisational error accidentally sent the rally through roadworks near Vitoli. Toivonen rounded a bend too quickly to respond to the concrete barriers and the hole in the road, and ploughed straight into them. Thankfully the workers had managed to get out of the way, but for Toivonen and chassis 402, the rally was over. With a trail of broken cars behind him and the competition tougher than ever, he climbed into this fresh car – chassis 408 – on 23 August 1984 for his home event, the rapid forest roads of the 1000 Lakes.
Stig Blomqvist took an early lead in his Audi, but in just the second stage, at Humalamäki, in a horrible foretaste of the incidents which were to bring Group B rallying to an end, Julian Roderick misjudged a yump and rolled his Vauxhall Chevette HSR into a crowd of spectators. Needing to get ambulances in to deal with the numerous serious injuries, the stage was cancelled. The atmosphere was downbeat, but the rally went on. Ari Vatanen slipped into the lead – the first time the new Peugeot 205 T16 had done so – but Toivonen was on home turf and determined not to let the two-wheel-drive setup of his Lancia hold him back.
He hurtled between the trees of the infamous Harju stage on maximum attack. Spectators gathering at the ski-ramp-like jump towards the end of the rapid stage noted that Toivonen got this Lancia further off the ground than any other competitor. He posted
the fastest time of the stage. Then again at Ouninpohja and Päijälä. Fellow Finns Vatanen and Lancia teammate Markku Alén fought back before Toivonen scored another rapid series of stage wins. As the final flag fell in Kuohu in the silvery light of that August morning, it became clear that Toivonen, in an ageing two-wheeldrive car at the limits of its development, had not only finished the rally in third, but kept the imperious Audi Quattro of Stig Blomqvist off the podium. Toivonen and navigator Juha Piironen emerged from this car to collect their silverware – but Toivonen was in agony.
That burst of shocking speed, that determination to prove his worth to Cesare Fiorio, had done it. The sheer pace that had launched this car so far into the air at Harju had left Toivonen with a back injury so serious that his doctors ordered him to sit out the rest of the season. Before San Remo, Lancia announced that its Audi-countering four-driver dream-team squad was being reduced to just two contenders – Markku Alén and Attillio Bettega.
Toivonen spent the rest of the 1984 season convalescing at home in Finland. He wanted that 1985 drive with Lancia, but knew that with just one podium, two avoidable car-wrecking accidents and a season-ending injury to his name in what should have been a crucial five-rally test for Fiorio, his chances were slim. David Richards also claimed at the time that Toivonen had committed to Rothmans Porsche for 1985. For the man who had taken an outclassed machine, led rallies and scored serious points at World Championship level, it was not enough. With Lancia announcing a slimmed-down team, his chances didn’t look good.
But a year to the day of Fiorio’s terse original introduction of Toivonen to the Lancia squad, the world’s motor sport press gathered in Turin as the covers were whipped away from the new Delta S4. The lucky drivers of this new machine, Fiorio announced, were to be Markku Alén, and Henri Toivonen. Before his untimely death on the 1986 Tour de Corse, he won the 1985 RAC and 1986 Monte Carlo Rallies with ease. No-one had been in any doubt that he was on course to be a World Rally Champion.
And what of the car that put him there? Lancia used it for testing ahead of the 1985 Monte, before selling it to Volta, the ERC team run by Vic Preston Jr and John Lyall, which ran it on the Costa Smeralda in Pirelli livery, finishing fourth. The following year, sponsored by French nightclub Fun, it contested the Tour de France Auto with Dominique Gaulthier, finishing eighth, before Toivonen’s fatal accident – and, with it, the banning of Group B – rendered it unusable. But it had already written itself into history by giving Toivonen the chance to prove himself as one of rallying’s all-time greats… as well as seeing the 037’s career out on a high.