My daughter did not initially believe me when I told her that, for a few years, people were so obsessed with Group B rally cars that they’d climb to the sides of roads just to get close enough to touch one, even at the risk of losing a finger.
Some of the photography from the era looks more like war paintings than anything having to do with sports. It’s as if, having gone through generations of bloody and mechanized warfare, Europeans in the ’80s settled for the next closest thing.
This all came up a couple of weeks ago when I was playing the game Art of Rally, which is a highly stylized recreation of the golden era of rally. We were driving through Finland or Japan or somewhere, and when you come to certain intersections, there are little eraser-shaped people who dodge in and out of the road. It seemed absurd to her, even though it was very real, as you can see in this video simply called “Rally Group B – Crazy Spectators.” This led me down a rabbit hole of watching rally videos with her.
I got the top photo from the press release site Newspress, though I can’t find the original press release. It shows Miki Biasion in the Group B Lancia Delta S4 from 1986. It looks more like John Singleton Copley’s “The Death of Major Pierson.” A truly amazing photo that captures the closeness of it all. That same year, Henri Toivonen and his co-driver Sergio Cresto died in the S4 they were driving.
Just look at this. Truly bonkers.
This moment in the World Rally Championship is probably the last mainstream racing season that was somehow too dangerous for the drivers and the competitors. The only modern equivalent is the Isle of Man TT, which saw five fatalities in 2022. While the risk exists at any racing event, no one throws themselves in front of cars like rally nerds in the ’80s. That’s probably a good thing.
Group B produced some of the greatest and most desirable cars ever. That’s the appeal to me of Art of Rally. I love the romantic version of this period when the cars were almost always faster than the drivers.
I think there’s also an appeal because so many modern F1 tracks have started to feel like every other F1 track. The race could be in Miami and still sort of look like Bahrain or Abu Dhabi. I think that’s part of the reason why I love Monaco, even if it’s the least exciting race on the F1 calendar. It looks like Monaco.
WRC in the Group B era had the magic of the wildest cars, the best drivers, the craziest fans, and tracks that represented the extremes of planet earth. I miss it in the same way some of the people in those videos miss their pinkies.
Photo: Newspress
Here is a video from the cockpit with Colin McRae in a Subaru. It looks to me like it’s from the early WRC era, so it is 2 generation newer than Group B. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Wg-zW5chKGU
Sounds like your daughter is smarter than the average 80’s rally fan, haha!
I am kinda glad some of the fever is starting to fade for Group B. Not that it wasn’t cool, but Group A cars quickly became faster than them in just a few years due to technology advances. We now have the absolute rocket ships of Rally1 which were pushing 500hp with the hybrids. Looking at Monaco this year there were plenty of fans getting as close to the road as the safety team would let them and it’s still an epic show
Art of Rally is so good. I am so bad at it.
Got to watch John Buffum and Gene Henderson fly through the Michigan forests at full tilt while crewing a slower team in SCCA Pro rally in 85. Hearing still hasn’t recovered, but great memories!
Buffom is American rally royalty
The only sport I can think of where spectators get closer is bicycle racing. And the spectators can be close enough to get a punch. Like the Paris to Nice race in 1984 where some dock workers decided to stage a protest in the middle of the race route.
Bernard Hinault plowed into them and came up swinging. Great picture…
https://www.rouleur.cc/en-us/blogs/the-rouleur-journal/bernard-hinault-the-punch?srsltid=AfmBOoobex-VaJSYU_NM_qCaulJ3UB6s8_0Hmq3lCnRsqt1ITizav4Fm
Excuse me has she seen the street takeover videos. People get so close they touch and are touched by the cars. Stupid then stupid now
I still see some rallying with spectators that close. It might not be WRC or whatever, but they’re very recent vids.
It’s hard to believe a lot of things that used to be no big deal, and this is definitely one of them. The world is a very different place.
Around 2009 or 2010 or so Audi had a commercial on TV which featured video footage of Michèle Mouton racing her 1982 Audi Quattro while dealing with such spectators in alarmingly close proximity. It was a memorable commercial for me though I don’t think it was actually shown on TV all that frequently, at least not around here in East Tennessee.
https://youtu.be/n5CztULFMX4?si=1g43ivwS7-2Gbt42
Go to a desert race and you can have an open class or trophy truck close enough to smell the burning oil.
I’ve never had the chance to attend a rally race, but I recall hearing stories when I was a kid of how nuts they were from folks who got the chance. I always thought they were exaggerated until I started seeing the video footage of old races and started reconsidering whether or not the storyteller really did touch the fender as it nearly ran them over….
It reminds me of the early days of monster trucks when they were still doing things like county fairs. I remember in the early 90s seeing the monster trucks at the county circle track and being only like 20′ from the truck as it did wheelies while crushing cars. Sure, there was a concrete wall, but it was shorter than the tires and didn’t seem like much protection if the truck went off course while the front axle was in the air. I could only imagine what that would have been like if monster trucks back then had all the power and did all the acrobatics the trucks of today do.
Rallies many years ago had night legs. I recall when I was young watching the Circuit of Ireland. I had climbed up in a tree and in the distance I could see the headlights of the rally cars lighting up the close as they came up the other side of the mountains, and then, suddenly a car would appear, wheels in the air, blast down the dirt road under my tree branch and gone, leaving the smell of Castrol R behind it. We have lost something I think.
This is the car nerd’s version of Running with the Bulls
Matt, props for calling out the painting-like nature of that photo – and The Death of Major Pierson was an excellent illustration.
Art of Rally is a wonderful little title. It’s rare to call a racing game chill, but AoR and the studio’s previous title, Absolute Drift, are just that, with their low-poly, zoomed-out overhead view that just oozes vibes. AoR makes it even better with its sprawling, impressionist almost, scenery rather than AD’s more abstract look.
The developers have a new game coming:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2929250/over_the_hill/
Looks like they really ramped the chill up.
Ooooh, like one of the spintires games but it’s Funselektor. I will have to wishlist that.
Hopefully it comes out soon. 2026 is a little vague.
Michelle Mouton talks about having to pretend to herself that the spectators were trees so she could focus on driving. 120mph on gravel farm tracks with 400bhp, and you visualize a thick forest inches from the car to ignore danger.
I was thinking how terrified I would be knowing if I messed up a turn people would die.
Spectators were routinely injured by cars that ran perfectly clean for the simple fact that some people were trying to touch the cars as they went by.
The worst part is that cars occasionally did mess up corners filled with spectators, with all of the horrible consequences you can think of. There are very good reasons why group B rallying ended so abruptly, as spectacular as it is.
The “Killer Bs” moniker was chosen for a reason.
As someone who is probably as big a fan of rallying that you will find in the US, I concur with your daughter. I can’t believe how close they got. I mean in Group B of all things, too!?
Pike’s Peak Int’l Hillclimb felt like a similar experience when the track was still at least partially dirt.
Here you are hanging out on the side of a mountain around some blind curve, and at some point in time somebody’s going to be coming around that corner sideways in a huge spray of gravel. You have to think to yourself:
Self, is this boulder you’re set up behind solid enough to stop/deflect somebody who loses it entirely?
…and…
Self, you really need to pee. Do you think it’s safe to sprint across the road to the port-a-potty on the other side given that you can’t see if anybody’s coming up on your corner?
Group B spectatorship is Exhibit A on why Europeans can be as stupid as Americans.
Football (soccer) Hooligans are Exhibit B.
I was going to say it’s a lot better these days compared to the 19080’s, but then…
(but then Rangers vs Celtic is literally a religious conflict)
Even today European sports fandom is a lot more toxic than American ones.
For one thing, the home and away supporters need not be separated here. In Europe someone’s going to leave in a casket.
(Insert Eagles fans fighting each other joke here)
Also: racism
I think South American fans may top the list of most toxic…
Andrés Escobar – Wikipedia
I have gone to a few rallies starting in the 00s, but would have loved to have seen the monsters. That was peak rallying.
Not just Group B. Fools were doing this at the Maine Forest Rallies I attended in the not THAT distant past. Group B made it worse because the crowds were bigger and the cars were SO MUCH faster.
I’m chicken-shit – I made sure there were some sturdy trees between me and the oncoming metal missiles.
Rally fan for years, started w/ my dad doing SCCA stage rally in the late 70s/80s. I love Group B videos. Might have to look up this Art of Rally game.
It’s my favorite modern racing game! What did you dad drive? A Datsun?
74 Opel Manta Rallye. I remember he had someone do some paint on it and added “The un-Datsun” on the trunk lid, in reference to the 7-Up commercials.
That’s cool!
I have been bit of a rally fan since the 1980s mostly becasue the cars looked like cars you could drive and the dirt roads were often public roads when not being raced on and the race was not making a left turn for 4 hours.
I loved the video where Hammond took his teen daughter to rally school. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWmIt2dIE4k&pp=ygUecmljaGFyZCBoYW1tb25kIGRhdWdodGVyIHJhbGx5
Thank you for that link, now I got to to show it to Dear Spouse.