What is a Modern Rally Car?

Reproduced courtesy:
Fast Fours magazine, 2000. www.FastFours.com.au

Whether it's full-blown World Rally Car or a Proton Satria, all cars in this year Australia Rally Championship are all pretty much like your family sedan.

Cars are like Evolution Mitsubishi Lancer and Subaru Impreza WRX have been designed to be easily modified for rally competition. Although the WRX available at the Subaru dealer doesn't come with a fully integrated roll cage, rally suspension, brakes, tyres or engine management system. The fact remains the engine, gearbox, body and aerodynamic kit are the same. And it's for this reason that rallying has become a very important marketing tool for manufacturers, as well as providing spectators with even better competition.

The Australian Rally Super Series features just about every car you see on the street today, including Holden Commodores, Toyota Corollas and Hyundai Coupes.

Across the different categories competition is fierce, no more so than at the head of the field. Neal Bates and Possum Bourne drive world championship vehicles. The World Rally Car (WRC) versions of the Toyota Corolla (Bates) and Subaru Impreza (Bourne) are built to special rules, which still allow everyday cars for competition.

Apart from Mitsubishi (who still build competition cars to Group A regulations), all of the top teams in the world championship have WRC versions of their popular models. Introduced in 1997, a world rally car is a highly-modified version of a mass production vehicle (25,000 vehicles per annum). This is why Neal Bates drives a Toyota Corolla and not a special hybrid car you could never buy. Neal's Bates Corolla does come with turbo-charging and four-wheel-drive (which you can't get on a road car,) but still retains the identity of the road version. The WRC rules have worked so well that the World Championship has gone from four official factory entries to eight in just three years.

The flow-down has been no more apparent than the Australian Championship, where local fans are now seeing world championship machinery at every event, and not just at the World Series.

It's expensive business, with Bates and Bourne not expecting to see much change from a million dollars in 2000. The technology involved is along par with Formula One, and ongoing development can see a car's performance change from event to event. Stage times on some events have dropped by as much as a minute over the past 12 months, and the gap between the Australia championship is closing all the time.

Not everyone can afford to run World Rally Cars. This is why the Australia championship is so diverse. The Production Car also sees factory entries from Subaru as well as Mitsubishi. Despite the standard tag, these cars are quick - not rocket-like - but fast all the same. This is where the vast majority of competitors choose to try and make their mark.

Costs are a lot less than WRC or Group A, but you wouldn't know it watching crews work on these cars. From the outside Cody Crockers's WRX version of Impreza is all not that different to his team leader, but inside the cabin things change dramatically. Crocker's car has a roll cage, but under the rules it retains all the trimmings found at the show room. Bourne's car is stripped back (to save precious weight) and features electronic gizmos you would expect on the same shuttle.

Formula 2 is for the Protons, Volkswagen and Hyundais of this world. Front-wheel-drive and no turbo charging, with engines no bigger than 2 litres. This is, after all, the venue which these makes sell their cars, so why not have them compete in the forests? Like the WRC and Production Car level, this is ultra competitive. On tarmac stages in Europe, these cars are the quickest of all!

Australia is Australia, and the name Falcon and Commodore is part of Australian motor racing folklore. Narrow forest tracks and V8-powered cars is something that has to be seen to be believed. A spectator favourite at any event is watching the gravel-spitting monsters negotiate a path between the trees.

Finding the next champion is the aim of the Proton Cup - a controlled series where rules are designed to keep costs down, and to find the winner through driving talent. Up to 20 cars will compete in this championship and young stars of the future will make their mark this year's Rally of Great Britain in a full factory entry.

With fields of up to 90 cars competing in events diversity continues to prove the big winner.

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