When Group B was cancelled in the mid 1980s due to FIA's growing concerns over the safety record of these rally cars, the eventual replacement/stopgap solution proposed was the introduction of Group S.

However, in OTL, while there was some development going into Group S (e.g. 4 car prototypes in development), the FIA finally decided in 1988 that it's not worth it and cancelled the category. Group S thus gained the distinction of being one of the few official categories of racing cars (rally or otherwise) to never actually compete in a single racing event or championship.

Group A kept going well into the late 1990s and by the mid 1990s, the FIA added more variety to rallying by introducing the (fairly short-lived) Kit Car group and shortly afterward the World Rally Car group (active to date). The latter in particular was seen as a solution to a missing higher-specs group than the long-lived Group A, a position that Group S was originally supposed to fulfill by replacing the ill-fated Group B.

So, how could or would the world of motorsports have been different if Group S was pursued back in the late 1980s ?

Was there even any realistic chance of Group S not being dropped and FIA going ahead with the plan ?

Would rallying and related sports using the classification take on some different characteristics if Group S was still active today or had been active for at least the majority of the late 1980s and the 1990s ?
 
No takers ?

Doing a little research on it. :cool:

I think it has great potential in rallying, namely because the homologation limits were so low, but I think it might have been even more interesting if they had a Group S2, with two-wheel-drive cars having a little more power to compensate for the lower traction.

What it would change depends on what the companies involved would do. Lancia and Toyota would move up to the ECV and 222R from the Delta Integrale and Celica GT-Four, but beyond that I'm not sure what difference it makes, because you have to decide whether Ford and Audi would move on. Both did withdraw at first after the end of Group B, but both had suitable cars for Group A efforts but chose not to race them. The Peugeot 205 T16 with a smaller motor could have been a very capable Group S car as well.

The Opel Kadett 4x4 and Lada Samara S-Proto are very wild ideas and I think really do pre-date the future World Rally Cars you mention. Whether others who ran in the last days of Group B (Citroen with the BX 4TC, Austin Rover with the Metro 6R4, Porsche with the 961) would move on depends on the case - Porsche did and a lot of Metro 6R4s went into rallycross so those two moving on is possible.
 
Excellent to see you here, TheMann. :)

A new version of the Kadett for the new group was in development at the time, there were at least a few prototypes.

As far as the Samara is concerned, I think there was either a Group A or Group B of that at some point in the late 1980s. (After it replaced the fairly long-serving Lada VFTS, a Soviet rally car derived from the typical "Zhiguli" Lada, i.e. the one known as the Lada Riva in the UK at the time.) It's a stretch with the Ladas, sure, as they weren't big in global rallying to begin with.

A conversion of the T16 Group B Peugeot to the Group S standard could be interesting, and is certainly plausible, given that Peugeot's been one of the more stalwart rally-goers among long-established manufacturers.

Toyota's and Lancia's decisions at the time are, as you note, up in the air. A 1990s with Lancia remaining in the major rally business and not quietly pulling out by the end of the first third of the decade would be quite fascinating as a racing ATL. Nowadays, Lancia is seen as a bygone rally competitor and few people associate the surviving brand with motorsports. With a prolonged stay of Lancia in the WRC and many of the smaller championships, we could get a fairly different historical reflection on 1990s rallying.

What do you think: What manufacturers that benefitted during the OTL 1990s situation could get into steep competition if Group S was adopted ?

I don't know much about any of this but it's interesting stuff to read about! Keep going!

Thank you. :) In alternate history, it's often the little things that are coolest to contemplate. Motorsport AH discussions need a bit more love. Especially (originally) non-American motorsport traditions. ;)
 
A new version of the Kadett for the new group was in development at the time, there were at least a few prototypes.

I knew of that, and Opel's involvement in rallying was a long-time one, but I'm not sure whether the Kadett 4x4 could compete with the mid-engined monsters (222R, ECV) or the Group B rockets rebuilt to Group S standards (RS200, 205 T16, Metro 6R4) even if it was well-developed.

As far as the Samara is concerned, I think there was either a Group A or Group B of that at some point in the late 1980s. (After it replaced the fairly long-serving Lada VFTS, a Soviet rally car derived from the typical "Zhiguli" Lada, i.e. the one known as the Lada Riva in the UK at the time.) It's a stretch with the Ladas, sure, as they weren't big in global rallying to begin with.

I agree that the Samara is a stretch, but the Samara S-Proto IMO is a project that Lada might just wanna put some effort into, namely because the biggest problem that Lada's rally cars had was being hugely down on power compared to rivals. The Soviet automakers were pushing hard to improve their offerings both at home and abroad in the 1980s (the road-going Samara was one such example) and the development of the S-Proto as a promotional tool might be beneficial enough for them to go for it.

A conversion of the T16 Group B Peugeot to the Group S standard could be interesting, and is certainly plausible, given that Peugeot's been one of the more stalwart rally-goers among long-established manufacturers.

True, and beyond that the 205 T16 is among the smallest and lightest physically of the Group B cars (along with the Metro 6R4). Peugeot at the time was really pushing for its diesels, so perhaps a turbodiesel 205 Group S might be on the cards....

Toyota's and Lancia's decisions at the time are, as you note, up in the air. A 1990s with Lancia remaining in the major rally business and not quietly pulling out by the end of the first third of the decade would be quite fascinating as a racing ATL. Nowadays, Lancia is seen as a bygone rally competitor and few people associate the surviving brand with motorsports. With a prolonged stay of Lancia in the WRC and many of the smaller championships, we could get a fairly different historical reflection on 1990s rallying.

To be fair, if Group S didn't have a massive cost issue, I can see both Toyota and Lancia staying in it, as the 222R was heavily developed and the ECV was based on the competitive Delta S4, so the possibilities of the automakers staying in there are obvious - but Group S would almost certainly cost more than Group A, which is a problem on two fronts, the first being the cost of competition and the second being the fact that a 20-car production run doesn't make using these cars for the model's promotional purposes a very likely possibility - Lancia cannot promote the Delta with the ECV like they could with the Delta Integrale.

What do you think: What manufacturers that benefitted during the OTL 1990s situation could get into steep competition if Group S was adopted ?

Toyota, yes. Ford, probably. Toyota's gonna go for it in either Group S with the 222R or Group A with the Celica GT-Four, and Ford, having spent bags of money developing the RS200, is not gonna abandon it, particularly since the ideal engine for the RS200 is also going to be used in their Sierra Cosworth touring car which hit the streets hard in 1987. Ford's big curveball could be if they figure out how to use the RS200 drivetrain in the Sierra or Escort for touring car racing, as the Sierra RS500 was known for being incredibly powerful but ratther difficult to drive, particularly against the Holden Commodore, BMW M3 and Nissan Skyline GT-R it ran against in touring car racing.

Lancia, Peugeot, Austin Rover and Audi, maybe. Audi IMO is more likely to bail out owing to their move after Group B into touring cars, as the BMW M3 and Mercedes 190 Cosworth are about to drop into the world of touring car racing. Lancia would have to decide if they could develop a Group S in place of or alongside the Delta Integrale, which was well underway by the time of the end of Group B in mid-1986. They could go the cheaper route with the Delta Integrale, but they might wanna keep the ECV project going to go for the brass ring, but as Toyota and Ford tool up that's gonna be hard to keep up. Peugeot has a big sports car program that will suck up a lot of free cash in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, so I think they may be there for a while with the 205, but once the 205 GTI is out of production they'll probably bail out. Austin Rover is a total crapshoot, couldn't tell you either way.

The losers from Group S would be those makers who jumped into the Group A world in this timeframe, most of all Subaru and Mitsubishi. The Subaru Impreza Turbo and WRX and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution became the legends they did on the backs of rallying wins. Subaru might be able to work around this by developing something like the Impreza 22B for the Group S rules, but Mitsubishi is gonna have a problem - their only sports car is the 3000GT, which is far too big to be an effective rally weapon.

Opel and (especially) Lada are wildcards, the former depending on GM's willingness to fund such an effort and the latter on Russia's economic chaos of the 1990s. I'd love to see the Samara S-Proto really go for it - the Russians are not fools, and I'd bet this is the sort of the thing they could be really, really good at.

Thank you. :) In alternate history, it's often the little things that are coolest to contemplate. Motorsport AH discussions need a bit more love. Especially (originally) non-American motorsport traditions. ;)

I agree, and as a life-long racing nut, I'm always game to discuss racing AH scenarios and TLs. :)
 
I don't know much about any of this but it's interesting stuff to read about! Keep going!

Rallying in the 1980s rapidly moved from road-going cars made into race cars into crazy forest weapons before they went too far and began killing people (Attilio Bettega, Henri Toivonen and Sergio Cresto at Corsica, Michael Wyder in Germany and three spectators in Portugal, not to mention Ari Vatanen cheating death in Argentina), which forced the FIA to shift gears. They had realized that the power outputs of the Group B cars had gone completely insane (the Lancia Delta S4, Ford RS200 and Peugeot 205 T16 made over 550 HP by mid-1986, the Audi Quattro S2 was making more like 650 HP) and Group S was meant to allow the dirt rockets to remain but with far lower power outputs, but the disasters of the 1986 season ended that idea.
 
There's a great bbc documentary about the group B era called 'madness on wheels: rally's craziest years' if you haven't seen it then I heartily recommend it.

Chris
 
surely not

But wasn't group S just group B on steroids. I remember that the group S Lancia had more power than a contemporary formula one car. Faced with the thought of all that power among the trees, right along side spectators it's no surprise that the FIA got cold feet and went for group A.

Having worked in Motorsport safety and rescue in those days I can't disagree.
 
But wasn't group S just group B on steroids. I remember that the group S Lancia had more power than a contemporary formula one car. Faced with the thought of all that power among the trees, right along side spectators it's no surprise that the FIA got cold feet and went for group A.

Having worked in Motorsport safety and rescue in those days I can't disagree.

Group S was a proposal to effectively take Group B cars and cut their power in half - the top Group B cars in 1986 made 650+ horsepower, the Group S idea would reduce that to 300 hp or so. I had the idea of two classes here a Group S with 320 hp and a Group S2 for cars of about 400 hp but only with two-wheel-drive, namely to allow serious sports cars and some of the best touring cars of the time to take to rally stages.
 
Group S was in many ways (in terms of performance and drivetrain) what the WRC class, introduced in 1997, is nowadays. I've even read that the WRC class was conceived as a belated and more modern take on the original Group S proposal.
 
The real problem with Gp B was the very poor marshalling and crowd control standards used. To be honest it was surprising there hadn't been a serious accident prior to the 86 Portuguese accident. Although, unless they had modern (ie 21st century F1 spectator) standards its likely someone would get seriously dead. The Gp B cars were spectacularly quick. I remember Lancia took a car to Monza for tarmac testing just before the Corsican in 85, it was run at normal rally weights with a 2 man crew and still lapped fast enough to qualify for 2nd row on the Grand Prix. I saw a Audi on the RAC take off from the start with the front wheels off the ground for 30 yards on gravel.

Ford made an error with the RS200, they took a slightly bored out 1.7 turbo engine developed for the Mk3 Escort RS1700 but found themselves competing with 2 litre turbo Audi's and Peugeots. They were looking at a new 2.0l engine derived from the Hart racing F1 unit but the ban got there first. The real oddity was Skoda, they were building a 130 derived Gp B car with 4 wd and a turbocharged BDA engine.

I think the only people who got anything out of the whole debacle was Audi who used their Gp B engine in the Audi 200 derived car on US circuits the next year - those cars were capable of 200 mph
 
Rallying's changed a lot in the sense of safety, marshaling and similar. A power limit sounds like the sort of thing that can be bypassed, in the attitudes of the time at least, by messing around with electronics. As for dropping the minimum to ten, that could get awfully like the late 90s GT1 class (seriously mate, here's where you put the suitcase ... here, in the petrol tank). What a totally purpose-built rally car could look like could be very interesting ...
 
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