RALLYING ROUND
Lesser spotted on the rally stages of 1980s Africa, the Group B Peugeot 504 pick-up is a little-known curio. But the model has blossomed anew in Yorkshire
Charting one man’s mission to recreate a forgotten but fascinating Group B car
The spectre of Group B still looms large in the consciousness of today’s rally enthusiast. For those too young to remember it firsthand, it seems so improbable as to be more fiction than fact – like Beatlemania or Mccarthyism. Rallying is a pretty peculiar thing in itself: drive a fast car from point A to point B at full tilt, with countless people watching. Then throw in the eye-widening jeopardy of snow, rocks, trees, loose gravel, jumps, lakes, mountains, zebras and everything else. Perhaps that’s why it captures the imagination so vividly.
There have been a great many rally disciplines, formulae and events over the years, but Group B has most of them licked for sheer unhinged lunacy. Introduced by the FIA for the 1982 season in both rallying and sports car racing, all bets were off.
Manufacturers used high-tech materials to keep the weight ultra-low, turbo boost levels were unrestricted, while the body paid only the merest soupçon of lip service to production models. Only 200 production examples were required to meet the homologation criteria, in contrast to the more stock Group A’s 5000, and the series rapidly became an arms race. In the five years between 1981 (pre-group B) and 1986
(the year it was cancelled), the power output of the average rally car had more than doubled. Absurd machines such as the Ford RS200, Metro 6R4, Peugeot 205 T16 and Lancia Delta S4 demonstrate just how bizarre things had got.
Nestling uncomfortably in Group B history is the Peugeot 504 pick-up. A jarring and confusing reality to many, because the fact that the 504 ‘ute’ existed as a bona fide Group B contender might sound like the ramblings of a madman. After all, it isn’t a spaceframed silhouette of a hatchback, it doesn’t have a howling 600bhp motor with a turbo the size of a dinner plate, nor does it have some serpentine twin-charging set-up. It doesn’t even have four-wheel drive.
Nevertheless, it is a fact: Group B wasn’t all about fireball 205 T16s with almighty clamshells and foot-long flames spitting from hyperactive exhausts for Peugeot. It also entered something that would be handy for carting garden waste and domestic bric-a-brac to the tip.
You may be feverishly racking your brain, trying to recall seeing such an unexpected vehicle slithering through the snow of Monte-carlo. When your mental filing system returns a disheartening ‘File Not Found’, reassure yourself that this is because the 504 pick-up was more of an African rally contender.
Historically speaking, the rugged 504 has a special place in the culture – and the hearts –
of the African continent. The model range officially spanned 16 years, from 1968-’83, comprising saloons, estates, coupés and convertibles as well as pick-up trucks. Manufacturing continued, using Peugeot knock-down kits, until 2004 in Kenya and 2006 in Nigeria.
Coupé and saloon 504s with V6 engines were homologated for Group 4 rallying in the mid-’70s, enjoying success throughout the remainder of the decade, but it wasn’t until 1982 that the decision was made to homologate the pick-up truck. It was originally intended for Group A, because it satisfied the mass-production stipulations, but there was one hurdle: the interior just wasn’t big enough. It fell into Group B simply by default.
Helpfully for the plucky truck, its engine size allowed it to enter the B-9/B-10/B-11 class among other minnows such as the Lada 2105 VFTS, Citroën Visa Mille Pistes and Škoda 130LR, giving it a fighting chance. Assorted period race documents erroneously list the pickup as a V6, like its coupé sibling, but it was in fact running a 170bhp, 1971cc petrol four-pot.
With its rugged rear-wheel-drive platform tried and tested on African terrain, the 504 made short work of the Kenyan Safari and the Côte D’ivoire rallies. In its debut WRC outing, in the hands of Johnny Hellier and John Hope, the truck finished eighth in the 1983 Safari Rally; its best WRC finish would be fifth in the ’84 Côte d’ivoire for David Horsey and David Williamson. Although, just 12 cars entered…
Horsey did win the African Rally Championship in his 504 in ’84, so its credentials in the pantheon of rally champs are assured.
The 504 you see here isn’t a genuine works rally pick-up, but instead a faithful recreation built by North Yorkshire-based enthusiast Allan Weston. Until early 2018, this Peugeot had been carrying out the usual duties of such apocalypseproof machines – all the hard work and leading a generally thankless life – before a flash of inspiration spirited it away from its day job of shoving cars about at an auction house.
“I’ve never done anything on this scale before, other than building a 6R4 from a box of bits for a mate,” says Weston. The mate in question is Tim Bendle of the renowned Slowly Sideways rally collective; another friend and club member Adam Keeler is the man who can be credited with planting the seed of this project.
“Adam has a collection of rally cars, which I look after for him,” Weston explains. “I’ve been trusted to drive them at various events, and he wanted to help me get invited in a car of my own. But, with me being unable to afford a traditional Group B car, he came up with the idea of the pick-up. So we decided to build it together. With his help, I could make a credible entrant with a difference. When we told people what we were up to, they thought we were mad.”
The donor for the project was found on ebay, bought blind and picked up by a friend of Keeler’s. And, as anyone who has bought a car from the internet sight-unseen will attest, this is an excellent way to submerge yourself in the deep end of some truly murky waters.
“We stripped some bits off and could immediately see it was in a really bad way,” Weston laughs, with typical Yorkshire gallows humour. “It had no sills, no rear floor, bits of the chassis missing. The best thing about it was the engine bay because, having been a leaky diesel, there was oil everywhere and that had protected it!”
So began the rebuild. A four-month deadline was set, not in some faux-drama televisual style, but because Weston had written a letter to the organisers of the Goodwood Festival of Speed
‘A four-month deadline was set, not in some fauxdrama televisual style, but because he had written to the Festival of Speed’
outlining the project and had somewhat unexpectedly received a very positive response saying they’d love to have the car on the rally stage.
“That was when it got real,” says Weston. “I did all the big fabrication stuff, such as making the sills, rear chassis and pick-up bed, and I had a friend – Marc Nordon of MNR Sportscars – make me a Wrc-style rollcage. The hubs were converted from five- to four-stud to use periodtype wheels. Adam was in charge of the fit-and-finish stuff, which he loves doing and does very well. A lot of parts came from Peugeot Parts Specialists in South Yorkshire. And then of course we had to source an engine – that was fun! We found most of the bits on ebay, and sent it off to Ian Myers Race Engines.”
The spec of the pick-up is just as it was on the 1980s works cars, Keeler having found the homologation papers online.
“It’s a 1971cc with a 504 TI cylinder head,” Weston explains. “The only thing I couldn’t find was the correct inlet manifold, so I adapted a Volvo 240 one to suit and made an adaptor plate to take the twin Weber 45s. We’re currently having a new cam made for it, which should take it to the full 170bhp that the works cars had.”
The only concessions to modernity have been the seat and to make the rollcage out of sturdier tubing. Weston grimaces as he recalls how the truck fought back at every stage of the build, serving up almost comical jeopardy as the deadline neared. “We just about finished it on the Wednesday night, then set off on Thursday morning,” he says. “It ran for three days on the rally stage without issue. It’s really solid and predictable to drive – the rack-and-pinion steering isn’t power-assisted, which provides a lot of feedback and it never feels as though it would surprise you. The cabin is basic but practical, and with the fuel-line running through it you get a faint smell of petrol, too, which makes it feel authentic. When the build was completed it was relatively quiet, but the exhaust’s been shortened to exit from the side.
“It is quite a long vehicle so you have to use the handbrake a lot to get it around corners, unless you like doing three-point turns. It’s a very physical thing to drive, very involved and pleasingly analogue. But it’s not exactly the fastest-accelerating car on the planet.”
Weston’s endeavours neatly mirror the emergence of the rally 504 pick-up itself; much like those original competition vehicles, this curious tribute made its debut among confused and confounded faces, proved its worth in style, and won itself an amused cache of admirers.
Group B nostalgia might be bubbling over right now, but this Peugeot pick-up proves that, even in the biggest of rally leagues, the underdogs get to have their day.