A lot of people from the USA posting on this thread, so its understandable that just about the only rally action you get to see on TV is the WRC.
Which is a shame, because what you are all asking for, production cars with just the safety equipment fitted still very much exists in the world of rallying, its called the Production World Rally Championship (PWRC); also you have the Juniour World Rally Championship (JWRC), which runs FWD 1.6litre cars. These two championships follow the WRC, competing on about half the rallys each year.
You can find info on both of these at the WRC website.
JWRC Info
PWRC Info
In addition almost every country runs its own national rally series, the USA having the very good SCCA events (we even get them on TV here in the UK), try and get along to something like this if you can.
SCCA Rally info
You also need to remember that the WRC has always represented the highest level of technology avaliable for the cars, the Audi quattro use of 4wd and turbo charging was a major techological leap. Group B cars carried technology that was advanced even beyond the F1 cars of the same period, the WRC has always been about pushing the limits of the technology avaliable.
To complain that the WRC is too high tech is like complaining that F1 is to high tech. Striping back the level of technology in the WRC would just make the WRC another version of the PWRC.
On the subject of the rally length, the special stages (closed road - maximum speed) sections have got slightly shorter over the last few decades, but not (on average) by as much as you would imagine. The part that has changed is the road sections between the special stages, these now are shorter runs that simply link up the specials. In the past they used to be huge runs.
As an example, the old RAC Rally GB that I used to watch as a 7 year old with my dad (i'm now 34) started in Scotland and covered the entire UK on the road stages, the rally also ran for five days rather than the normal three days now. Some of these changes are simply down to commercial pressure and the requirements of global TV audiences.
Just to give you an idea of the length of drive a WRC driver and co-driver face, the 2003 Propecia Rally New Zealand covered a total of 1299kms over the three days, of which 403.24km were special stages (22 in total). Now in anyones book thats one hell of a demanding schedule to keep to and drive competatively, BTW the above distances are typical of a modern WRC event.
