Stigs of dynamite

Author

admin

Browse pages
Current page

1

Current page

2

Current page

3

Current page

4

Current page

5

Current page

6

Current page

7

Current page

8

Current page

9

Current page

10

Current page

11

Current page

12

Current page

13

Current page

14

Current page

15

Current page

16

Current page

17

Current page

18

Current page

19

Current page

20

Current page

21

Current page

22

Current page

23

Current page

24

Current page

25

Current page

26

Current page

27

Current page

28

Current page

29

Current page

30

Current page

31

Current page

32

Current page

33

Current page

34

Current page

35

Current page

36

Current page

37

Current page

38

Current page

39

Current page

40

Current page

41

Current page

42

Current page

43

Current page

44

Current page

45

Current page

46

Current page

47

Current page

48

Current page

49

Current page

50

Current page

51

Current page

52

Current page

53

Current page

54

Current page

55

Current page

56

Current page

57

Current page

58

Current page

59

Current page

60

Current page

61

Current page

62

Current page

63

Current page

64

Current page

65

Current page

66

Current page

67

Current page

68

Current page

69

Current page

70

Current page

71

Current page

72

Current page

73

Current page

74

Current page

75

Current page

76

Current page

77

Current page

78

Current page

79

Current page

80

Current page

81

Current page

82

Current page

83

Current page

84

Current page

85

Current page

86

Current page

87

Current page

88

Current page

89

Current page

90

Current page

91

Current page

92

Current page

93

Current page

94

Current page

95

Current page

96

Current page

97

Current page

98

Current page

99

Current page

100

Current page

101

Current page

102

Current page

103

Current page

104

Current page

105

Current page

106

Current page

107

Current page

108

Current page

109

Current page

110

Current page

111

Current page

112

Current page

113

Current page

114

Current page

115

Current page

116

Current page

117

Current page

118

Current page

119

Current page

120

Current page

121

Current page

122

Current page

123

Current page

124

Current page

125

Current page

126

Current page

127

Current page

128

Current page

129

Current page

130

Current page

131

Current page

132

Current page

133

Current page

134

Current page

135

Current page

136

Current page

137

Current page

138

Current page

139

Current page

140

Current page

141

Current page

142

Current page

143

Current page

144

Current page

145

Current page

146

Current page

147

Current page

148

Current page

149

Current page

150

Current page

151

Current page

152

Current page

153

Current page

154

Current page

155

Current page

156

Current page

157

Current page

158

Current page

159

Current page

160

Current page

161

Current page

162

Current page

163

Current page

164

Current page

165

Current page

166

Current page

167

Current page

168

This quiet Swede with a love of the loud pedal played a pivotal role in rallying’s wildest period: Group B. Twenty years on he floors it again. John Davenport reports

A typical summer’s day in England: rain. And talk was of the Northants floods just forded. Then two things happened, almost simultaneously: a transporter carrying three Audis, two Lancias, a Ford and a Peugeot lumbered into sight — and the rain stopped. Within minutes the sun was climbing, as was the anticipation: Stig Blomqvist was pulling on his overalls. The 1984 world rally champion was about to reacquaint himself with Group B.

It took the quiet Swede 20 years to reach the pinnacle of his sport, having spent the bulk of that time flat chat aboard two-stroke and V4 Saabs. It was a one-off, eye-opening run in a Lancia Stratos on the 1978 Swedish Rally that hinted at the sport’s, and Stig’s, new direction.

“It was fantastic to come to such a responsive car,” says Stig. “The power meant you could attack. I had a proper training car [for the recce] but it took some stages on the rally to feel in control. I had a spin in soft snow in the beginning, but then it was okay and I started setting some good times.” Swedish understatement: he was fastest on 16 of the 38 stages; winner Björn Waldegård was fastest on seven. Had Blomqvist not suffered a broken throttle linkage on one of the longest tests, he could well have won.

Yet he stayed with Saab, driving its bulky, overpowered, front-wheeldrive 99 Turbo for another three years before a couple of drives in a Talbot Sunbeam Lotus towards the end of 1981. But the following year Audi Sweden asked him to drive its Quattro on the Swedish, which he promptly won, ahead of regular driver, Hannu Mikkola.

“Hannu was leading and I was second,” remembers Stig. “But then he went off. I squeezed by him, but Michèle Mouton [aboard the third Quattro] was next on the road and she punted Hannu even further off the stage. I could not help but win.”

Stig was tackling British rallies in the Talbot, but by mid-season Audi Germany was offering him more Quattro work. On the 1000 Lakes he was a close second to Mikkola, winning 21 of the stages: “I had a deal with Michelin and could use their latest TRXs, but Hannu was stuck with the Klebers the works team was contracted to. We both got so far ahead that the engineers detuned the cars on the last day. I had a suspension problem, Hannu took the lead and they decided we should stay that way.”

To outside observers, Blomqvist’s style with the Quattro was reminiscent of how he’d driven his Saabs: very committed, with lots of left-foot braking. “Sure, I used left-foot braking, but early Quattros were quite difficult: the power came in suddenly and it was easy to brake too much with the left foot, kill the speed and the engine, or not enough and get caught by understeer.”

It was something that he — and the sport — was going to have to get the hang of.

The Group 4 homologation rules had become subverted by manufacturers building just 400 of a ‘rally special’, such as the Sunbeam Lotus and Stratos, and it was clear that the distinction between saloon and GT was permanently blurred. FISA, the new regulatory body, decided that simplification was needed and sat down with the manufacturers in the early 1980s to draw up new groups and tuning rules. With rallying in mind, it was quickly agreed there should be two groups: Group A for cars produced in numbers greater than 5000 per annum, and Group B for cars produced in ‘small’ quantities. The Germans — Audi, Porsche and BMW — thought ‘small’ should mean 2000 per annum; the Latins, plus a smattering of Brits and Opel (run by a Brit), thought 20 would be about right. Eventually, after more meetings in corridors than in committee rooms, the number chosen was 200. The consensus was that everyone could now build a run of specialist cars and that entry lists would be full…

And it almost happened according to the script. Lots of manufacturers went to extraordinary lengths to produce runs of 200 special cars, and for a brief period there were nine teams contesting the world series. But two things arrived at the same time as GpB: four-wheel drive and turbos.

Audi was not the force that created GpB. But it certainly helped guide its development. Before Ingolstadt arrived on the world scene at the start of 1981, rallying had had exotic cars. It had had turbochargers, too. But low-slung sportscars or engines with lots of power were next to useless if the visibility got bad and the road slippery; Escorts, Fiat 131s and Asconas were approaching the limit of ‘useable’ power.

Audi’s four-wheel drive reset the boundaries. Early Quattros were a bit basic but they showed the rest what the combination of lots more power and 4WD could do. On its debut at Monte Carlo, Mikkola was leading by almost 6min — after six stages. If he’d carried on at that rate, he would have won by more than half an hour!

A well-known Fiat rally engineer dismissed the Quattro as being “too complicated”. But it was not long before it was winning, and if it was a bit “complicated”, the challenge was there for the engineers to make a simpler, more reliable car. GpB was ideal for this process. Engineers could take the shape of a current production car and create inside it a sophisticated 4WD rally car. The companies got the benefits of rallying a car that looked identical to, and had the same name as, the cars they sold, while the teams got a winner and the spectators got a show of unequalled excitement.