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Originally Posted by Rodya234  Is it a Metro 6R4?
Please say yes,  |
We have a winner !!!!
Initially it was a 3L Naturally Aspirated 6 cylinder with 12:1 compression producing 410BHP at over 9,000rpm. 0-60 came up in around 3 seconds, 0-100 in around 8 seconds.
They then dropped the engine down to 2.3L and twin turbo'd it, producing 650BHP and running 0-60 in around 2.5 seconds. The car had to weigh no less than 1100kg (around 2400lbs) for the rules. That amounts to 590BHP per ton.
As we all know Group B rallying was cancelled after several high profile fatal accidents which were inevitable when you send lightweight 650BHP+ cars down twisty dirt track roads at speeds of up to 140mph:
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1986
The stage was set for 1986 to be a very exciting season. Defending champion Timo Salonen had the new Evolution 2 version of Peugeot's T16 with ex Toyota driver, Juha Kankkunen. Audi's new Sport Quattro S1 boasted over 600 hp (450 kW) and a huge snowplow-like front end. Lancia's Delta S4 would be in the hands of the Finnish prodigy Henri Toivonen and Markku Alen, and Ford was ready with its high tech RS200 with Stig Blomqvist and Kalle Grundel.
Everything was to go tragically wrong, however, on the "Lagoa Azul" stage of Portuguese Rally near Sintra. Portuguese national champion Joaquim Santos crested a rise to find the road blocked with spectators crowding to see the fastest cars come through. He lost control of his RS200 while trying to stop and plunged into the crowd. Thirty-one people were injured and three were killed. All the top teams immediately pulled out of the rally and Group B was placed in jeopardy.
Disaster struck again in early May at the Tour de Corse. Lancia's Toivonen was leading the championship, and once the rally got underway he was the pace setter. Seven kilometres into the 18th stage, Toivonen's S4 flew off the unguarded edge of a left hand hairpin bend and crashed into a ravine. The car landed inverted with the fuel tanks ruptured by the impact. The combination of red hot turbocharger, Kevlar bodywork, and ruptured fuel tank ignited the car and set fire to the dry undergrowth. Only a cloud of smoke and the lack of Toivonen's car at the finish indicated that something was very wrong. By the time rescue workers made it to the remote spot (some 30 minutes, by some accounts) all that remained of the car was a blackened frame with the bones of Toivonen and co-driver Sergio Cresto inside. With no witnesses to the accident it was impossible to determine what caused the crash other than Toivonen had left the road at high speed. Some cite Toivonen's ill health at the time (he reportedly was suffering from flu); other suggest mechanical failure, or simply the difficulty of driving the machine although Toivonen had a career full of crashing out while leading rallies. Up until that stage he was taking stage win after stage win and leading the rally by a large margin with no other driver challenging him. Simply using a racing fuel cell in place of the fuel tank may have saved them.
The crash came a year after Lancia driver Attilio Bettega had crashed and died in his 037. While that fatality was largely blamed on the unforgiving Corsican scenery (and bad luck, as his co-driver, Maurizio Perissinot was uninjured), Toivonen and Cresto's death, combined with the Portugal tragedy and televised accident of F1 driver Marc Surer in another RS200 which killed his co-driver, compelled the FIA to act: Group B cars were immediately banned for 1987.
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