Audi Sport quattro RS002 Group S Concept 1986

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France
France
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This suggestion forum is great, I didn't even know that this existed until today. Was this left over from the abandoned Group S?
It would've been raced in Group S, and it was dumb and foolish that the WRC didn't adopt Group S because the choice has still killed the WRC to this day. But it may have also been the next in the line of Group B cars had the class continued. Audi's racing department had long wanted a mid-engine Quattro to keep up with the Peugeot 205 T16 and the Lancia Delta S4. However, corporate wouldn't allow it because they were selling front engine, 4WD cars for the road, not mid-engine. Therefore a mid-engine Quattro was developed in secret and this was that Quattro. Word was that they had cooked a 1000bhp engine that could've raced in hill climbs, however, and I'm quoting Jalopnik here, driver's deemed it too "bat **** insane". When corporate found out about the mid-engine Quattro, thanks to one journalist with a camera, they ordered the project be killed.
 
There were many Group S cars that were shelved after the FIA decided to ban them:

This Audi

A brand new Ford prototype based on the RS200 (no pictures found sorry)

Lada Samara S-Proto

Lancia ECV

Toyota 222D (based on the MR2, but with over 950 HP:crazy:)

And the Opel Kadett Rallye 4x4 (was used in rallycross championships in Europe during the 1990s)
 
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It would've been raced in Group S, and it was dumb and foolish that the WRC didn't adopt Group S because the choice has still killed the WRC to this day. But it may have also been the next in the line of Group B cars had the class continued. Audi's racing department had long wanted a mid-engine Quattro to keep up with the Peugeot 205 T16 and the Lancia Delta S4. However, corporate wouldn't allow it because they were selling front engine, 4WD cars for the road, not mid-engine. Therefore a mid-engine Quattro was developed in secret and this was that Quattro. Word was that they had cooked a 1000bhp engine that could've raced in hill climbs, however, and I'm quoting Jalopnik here, driver's deemed it too "bat **** insane". When corporate found out about the mid-engine Quattro, thanks to one journalist with a camera, they ordered the project be killed.
They killed off the Group B cars because they were just too dangerous, a lot of people died because of them. Piloting a 1000bhp car on a racetrack is dangerous even with modern safety systems, marshalling and track design, trying to do the same while travelling through a forest over uneven terrain after covering 500 miles is a death sentence.
While these cars seem exciting on paper its just not fair to ask a driver to put their life on the line every time they get into the car
 
They killed off the Group B cars because they were just too dangerous, a lot of people died because of them. Piloting a 1000bhp car on a racetrack is dangerous even with modern safety systems, marshalling and track design, trying to do the same while travelling through a forest over uneven terrain after covering 500 miles is a death sentence.
While these cars seem exciting on paper its just not fair to ask a driver to put their life on the line every time they get into the car
I didn't even say anything about canceling Group B other than Group S being the better solution. And Audi's rumoured 1000 HP engine, as I said, was tested but deemed to be too powerful for the drivers, but incarnations of the engine were still used for hillclimb. After Group B went away a lot of the cars were used in hillclimb and pushed 900 HP and it was fine.

But anyone who says Group B had to be canceled for safety doesn't actually understand what went on in Group B. The cars weren't required to use racing fuel cells. They had street fuel cells which easily ruptured in a crash. Replace those street cells with racing cells and that problem is solved. Crowd control is also easily solvable. First of all, rallies don't cover 500 miles. They are more like 200-250. Next years Monte Carlo rally will be 221.48 miles. And you act like they just get in the cars and run that distance consecutively, but they don't. They run about 20 stages over 4 days and the stage lengths are much smaller, averaging between 10 and 20 miles. And they don't go to the next stage until everybody has completed one stage, so that's a much smaller distance to manage and if its too much there is the obvious solution of making the stages shorter. That way crowds can be managed. Have you ever even seen a rally?
 
There were many Group S cars that were shelved after the FIA decided to ban them:

This Audi

A brand new Ford prototype based on the RS200 (no pictures found sorry)

Lada Samara S-Proto

Lancia ECV

Toyota 222D (based on the MR2, but with over 950 HP:crazy:)

And the Opel Kadett Rallye 4x4 (was used in rallycross championships in Europe during the 1990s)



There were 2 versions of the Lancia ECV, I think. This one, the first (?) looked faab!

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancia_ECV
 
Crowd control is also easily solvable.

I've always said that this was the main cause of the death of Group B.

Yes I know the cars became scarily fast without much improvement in safety but had the crowd been kept under control and been made to stand well away from the road then Group B may have survived for longer.
 
This, and the ECV make me wish Group S wasn't shelved. Apparently the ECV has over 600 horsepower. That would be fun. And I like the red livery. And this Quattro looks cool, even without a livery.
 
The cars weren't required to use racing fuel cells. They had street fuel cells which easily ruptured in a crash.

And they were mounted under the seats! And the cars were made with a high percentage of flammable materials, like aluminum, magnesium, carbon and plastics. And the category was so absurdly competitive teams (allegedly) cheated in incredibly dangerous ways, like (allegedly) storing extra fuel in the roll cage or (allegedly) replacing extinguishers with disguised NOS bottles

Crowd control was only really an issue in Portugal and Greece, and it could entirely be blamed on the local organizers. FIA could have told them to shape up or get bent, but Portugal and especially Greece were very prestigious races. Hell, FIA could have, as a protest, moved the entire championship to the USA and Canada, where rallying wasn't as loved as in Europe, but where races always were organized impeccably. But again, glamour and prestige. Of course, cancelling groups B and S killed a lot of that glamour and prestige anyway...

I can't say the same for the ECV2 , where it can be?

The Lancia museum in Turin used to have one, before it closed. No one knows where the museum cars ended up, last I heard they're in some warehouse, possibly as part of a private collection, which is not open to the public; very few people have seen it, I've only seen the pictures

Beppe Volta, legendary rally mechanic and current owner and driver of that running ECV that's a regular guest at the Vernasca Silver Flag, also owns an ECV2, but I'm told he keeps it disassembled and in storage. They're incredibly delicate cars, no spare parts are available for their unique components (especially the "Triflux" head), and so they're driven as little as possible. The one running ECV, for example, has been detuned to about 300 hp and Volta drives it very carefully

edit: the Italian Wikipedia article says Volta's ECV is actually a replica based on a Delta S4 chassis (but with the ECV engine and body panels), because they only made one ECV, and then converted it to an ECV2, so we'll probably never see both cars running at once (unless they're added to Gran Turismo ;))
 
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