This is going to be a slightly disjointed and hard to follow review, so I apologise in advance if you lose track of it. Just look at the bigger paragraphs, that's the reviews.
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Rallying, it’s come a long way. From being a little-known time trial event, through the mental ages of Group B, it’s become a multi-million dollar motor sport. But I’m not interested in that. What I’m interested in is what happens when you give a couple of Finnish blokes a batch of the most iconic cars built just for this, and see what happens when they tweak and tune it to within an inch of their lives. And we’ll be starting with one of the more little-known and earlier rally monsters. The Alpine A110.
The Alpine A110 is, basically and as far as I can tell, a french VW Beetle with more punch. And that’s not very good, because the only thing that was remotely good about that, was it was reliable. And to those of you who say, ‘What about Herbie?!’, Herbie doesn’t count, he isn’t real. There are many similarities between the Beetle and the A110. Both have big, bug-eyed headlights, both have their engines jammed up their arse, and both are rather old. That’s where the similarities stop. The Alpine has 142hp whereas the ‘hitlermobile’ had 40 odd hp. It also has a 50/50 weight distribution to counteract the weighty engine in the boot. And most unlike the Beetle, it’s a huge laugh to drive! It’s balanced in the corners, with a gentle drift on entry which carries you throughout the bend. Don’t be concerned about the RR layout, it can handle the power without making you piss yourself every time you go over a bump. It doesn’t mind you twitching the steering, it’s not like a Ruf Yellowbird which will send you spearing the other way when you apply some opposite lock. Of course, with less than twice the power of the Yellowbird, you would expect it to handle half as dangerously. And it does. But it’s still very quick for its size and power, doing a 1:31.479 on the TGTT.
All well and good, but what happens if you up power pass 250hp and dump 100 odd kg of interior and fat out of it? You’d expect it to become a mini Ruf, right? Wing or not, 50/50 balance or not, and regardless of setup, a light, (relatively) high powered RR will always be a pig to drive right? Wrong. Very wrong. This can dance through corners with the grace of an ocean wave in a flowing drift. And even though it weighs no more than a feather, it doesn’t bounce about over rough surfaces. Sure, it’s twitchier, and it may require more concentration to drive it, but it’s something you’ll learn to cope with. And when you do, you’ll realise the that this is actually very easy to drive. Not easy to drive for a RR, easy to drive, full stop. And in case you’re interested, the time it did on the TGTT was a 1:17.564. Not joking, that’s nearly 14 seconds faster. 13.915, to be precise. Only irritation is, mine will not go over 270hp. Aside from that, I can safely say, I’m in love with it. But I have to stop driving it I’m afraid. Times have moved on, and it has brought with it one of the most iconic 70’s rally cars ever made.
Lap times (Alpine A110RS)
1:31.479 (before, car completely stock, comfort soft tyres)
1:17.564 (after)
One of the most iconic 70’s rally car ever made. The Lancia Stratos. Styled by Bertone. Powered by Ferrari. Built to rally. It was purpose-built, and purposeful. And driving it just reinforces this fact all the more. The steering is sharp, the responses quick and coupled with a short chassis and (relatively) big power, and you’d get a knife-edged pocket rocket which, although hard to drive, is hugely rewarding. It will not tolerate idiocy, nor brutality. Brake gently as the car’s tiny length makes it extremely sensitive to direction and speed change. Don’t worry about the sideways-ness, it’s constant. Your only real options are how sideways you want it to be. You can have mildly sideways to dangerously sideways, or if you’re feeling brave (or just plain stupid), you can have near 90 degree slides. And a very big crash afterwards. Lap times? A 1:30.689, not bad for a car designed in the ‘70s.
Now, what happens, if we really piss it off, put it on a crash diet, and then feed it steroids for a few days? Well, you’d get this. A 345hp, 872kg, be-winged monster with the heart of a dragon. Extreme Oversteer Warning? Is that necessary? After a drive, I can safely say, no. But it does need a warning for the mental fishtailing you’d get coming out of corners. And by mental, I mean swaying from one side of the track to the other like it’s drunk. But just be more careful, and this really isn’t a problem. This is a tiny car with nearly 350hp, after all. You don’t drive a car like this like a hooligan, you drive it very seriously. But all the time, you can sense it wanting to just play, even if it does end up killing you. If you’re thinking that this car when sideways is going to be like playing russian roulette, you’re dead right. But it does deliver the thrills of playing with death. There’s a sense of danger to driving it. No matter how much fun (and it is HUGE fun) it is, you always get the feeling it’s slowly twitching free from you’re control and is plotting a way of killing you in the quickest way possible. But it never will kill you, just taunt you. Endlessly. With each slide hitting a point where you’ll think ‘I’ve had it now, I’m going to die! ARGGGHH!’, but then when you finally open your eyes and exit the corner, you’d think ‘I’m ALIVE!!! I haven’t died!!!’. And this car would make you feel like you did it, you pulled it away from killing you, you saved it from crashing. And trust me, that’ll feel good. Which is what this car seems to be about. It’s about having fun, but with the grim reaper always looking over your shoulders with his scythe, ready to see you off should you cock up. It’s dangerous fun. Playing with fire. But don’t think this car’s made just for fun. It’s not. With a lap time of 1:16. 487. Which is fast in its own right, but mixed in with the constant thrill of a spin or crash, and both the lap time and the car will suddenly become much more rewarding. It may be a pain to drive if you’re the aggressive sort, but just alter your style and you’d love this. I know I do.
Lap times (Lancia Stratos)
1:30.689 (before, car completely stock, comfort soft tyres)
1:16.487 (after)
Now, while that’s all well and good, these two old classic rally cars being breathed on and made much better, let’s not forget what really put rallying on the map. Group B. The time when rally cars were just a silhouette of their road going counterparts and could have the acceleration to rival F1 cars in their era. Some examples of these amazing machines was the Peugeot 205 Turbo T16 and the Ford RS200. Or rather, the rally versions were the ‘amazing machines’. The road cars had barely half the power of those rally racers. They also had rather crude parts fitted, as they were built just for homologation purposes. Which made the road cars horrid to drive. Just drive one of those two that I mentioned above. Actually, let me do you a favour and drive them for you.
Starting with the Peugeot. Or rather, I was going to start with the Peugeot. In a moment of madness, I accidentally put all the ‘unremovable’ parts on, rendering a ‘before and after’ comparison impossible. So thanks to my idiocy, this review may be slightly shorter than those above. Still, at least that’ll mean it could be finished quicker (day 2 at the time of typing this section, started on monday midnight).
Anyways, the car. And what a car. With a lively back end with the 4WD acting as a safety net to stop you spinning, this kind of barely tamed hooligan-style handling is the sort that reminds you of what gave hot hatches their fun-but-practical reputation. It’s the kind of handling that reminds me of my HKS CT230R. And in case you don’t know, that’s my favourite car as of now. Possibly in the whole of GT5. So it’s made quite a good first impression already. And with 400hp, it has enough power to keep that slide going endlessly. This car is what a 4WD sports car should be. Fun enough to keep you driving, safe enough to stop your ego from getting bruised. And it’s fast. With a lap of 1:16.341, it maybe just slightly faster than the Stratos earlier, but that had a very good power/weight ratio which leveled the playing field. This is a car which, I feel, represents what the new Evo X should have been like. Grips enough to keep you pointing the right way, powerful enough to make it fun and fast enough to make up for lost time. It stops well too, despite the brake balance being slightly odd, it does slow down quick enough to stop you from crashing. But it also encourages the arse to play. And what’s wrong with that? It’s so much fun, that you don’t want to stop driving. I drove this thing until my DS3 ran out of batteries. And I just plugged it in to charge, and continued driving, with me sitting blindingly close towards the TV. So, if I do go blind in the near future, I’m coming after you, Leonidae!
Lap times (Peugeot 205 Turbo T16)
1:16.341 (after)
Especially when you’ve created a new dilemma for me. A110, Stratos or 205 Turbo? This is tricky. And it’s been made trickier still, by the inclusion of this. The RS200. One of the cars responsible for killing Group B. Built to be the GT40 of rallying, it was designed specifically to fit within the rules and then dominate. Sadly, after a few crashes which killed several spectators, Group B was canceled and the RS200 faded from history. Still, enough of the history lessons and teary-eyed nostalgia. The car still needs to be driven. Again, this won’t be stock, as it’s borrowed. I couldn’t get one in time, so I borrowed one from my good friend GFxJG.
The RS200 in question has had the suspension, diff, gearbox, and brake balance set to the MFT tune already, and I’m not going to be so stupid to reset it, drive it, put tune on, and then drive again. So, here we go. And what a surprise. It’s not as good as the Peugeot. For a start, with a lap of 1:16.862, it’s 0.5 of a second slower. Ok, it does weigh several hundred kg more, but I thought it would be faster, and it isn’t. It’s also unbelievably stiff, you can see the car smashing into the little bumps on the road. But the stiffness means it doesn’t roll like a yacht and it can change directions almost instantly on flat tarmac. I say almost, because 1) if it did do that, it’ll catch you out every time and 2) the 4WD system is really holding it back. It can’t keep the power going to the right wheels to keep the car drifting, but it can’t shift the power around to keep it griping either. It’s stuck bang in the middle between oversteery fun and mind-bending grip, and this middle-ground isn’t a nice compromise. It’s a compromise of fun and headaches. It’s fun until the car either drops off the power band when you do the transition from drifting out of corner and drifting in to the next one, or suddenly just gripping and shooting you off into the grass for applying opposite lock. It’s hard to strike the balance with this, and balance is what this seems to need the most. I had high hopes for this, I thought it would be a 4WD GT40 with more weight and less power, but it’s not. It’s stuck in a no-man’s land of grip and drift. Either that, or I’m not good enough. Chances are, it’s the latter.
Lap times (Ford RS200)
1:16.862 (after)
Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evolution vs Subaru’s Impreza. Possibly the greatest thing the rally world has given us. These two cars have been going at each other since the ‘90s. And it has led to countless fans defacing one another’s pride in an attempt to prove each car’s worth. And as such, I will forgo the before and after. All I want to know, is which of these to 4WD rally-bred, supercar killing machines is fastest.
Now, I know that these cars (well one of them, anyway) are quite tricky to drive. But that’s part of the fun. And it’ll tell me how easy it is for someone to just get in and drive it, or rather how bad a driver I am. With the Subaru, I have to say this. Leonidae, you’ve created something truly terrifying. I’ve driven a TVR Cerbera Speed 12 with 1000hp on sports hards with wheelspin in 4th, I’ve powerslided an X1, and none of those come even remotely close to driving this when you’re doing a maximum attack lap. This is a car that is on the same level of twitchy and edgy-ness as that Stratos. Only this car has even more power. It’s so scary, yet so thrilling. The 4WD ‘safety net’ is banished from thought when you take your first corner as the thing instantly breaks free from you the moment you brake. Trust me, all of your prejudices about this car, be it good or bad, will be changed. Instead of the traditional 4WD grip and understeer, there is dangerous oversteer. Dangerous but fast. You’ve taken every understeery stereotype this car has and replaced it with fear. Blind panic. It’s so damn scary to drive, but so damn fast. And by fast, I do mean monstrously fast. It does a lap time which is on par with a fully tuned TVR Tuscan RM on sports softs. A 1:10.396 I think this is as close to a modern day Impreza 22B as a car can get. And for that, for eliminating all the Impreza’s understeery reputation and making me crap my pants, for turning it into a modern day version of the greatest Impreza ever made, I give you my utmost respect, Leonidae. It been ages since I was properly terrified driving a car. And yet, the surge of adrenalin you get, like being shot at and having the bullet miss you by a hair, is more than enough motivation to get you back out for another dose. Another drive. You would never tire, ever, of the way it can make your teeth chatter and your hands sweat. You need to concentrate, 110%, or you’d die.
The Evo, however, seems to have a different way of killing you. With understeer. Or just, weighted, slow and cumbersome steering. It’s hard say what’s causing it, but it’s really crippling this car’s ability. It’s running 2 seconds slower, at best two seconds slower. A 1:12.209, which isn’t bad considering the car’s not even fully run in, but I was expecting more. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great. It enough grip to fool you into thinking you’re using racing tyres, enough noise to make you think you’re driving a rally car, but not enough pace to back it up. For example, looking at the data log/telemetry thing, it seems that although the Impreza was by far the most tricky, with more erratic jumps and dips in terms of speed, the Evo was constantly lagging behind. Especially on corner exit and longer straights, the slight power and weight difference means the Evo is left in the dust. That said, I later did run a lap of 1:10.842. But it’s still a car which prefers safe and steady rather than brute aggression. The biggest gripe I have with this is that it isn’t as…darty as I’d like it. It’s not as nervous, as sharp as the Impreza. It’s good, no doubt, but it’s just lacking something.
Lap time (Impreza vs Evo)
1:10.396 (Impreza)
1:10.842 (Evo)
So, that’s proven. Although the Evo is a car which should be more…consistent, the Impreza is faster. And since that’s the whole point of these cars, it’s the winner. The ultimate rally-bred machine. The Subaru Impreza ‘Hyabusa’ (nice name, by the way).