Interesting article on the history of turbo rally cars

[Madhav]

Some of those early rally cars made 600hp in a sub 1000kg 4WD car!!!

Amazing stuff!

http://autospeed.com/A_110780/cms/article.html

That thing had 450hp but only weighed 900kg!!

Ford RS turbo, 600hp, sub 3sec 0-100 (and this is in the 80's!!)

Turbocharged and supercharged, over 500hp and only weighs 890kg!!!

 

[Guest]

Awesome find Madhav, was a fantastic read.

Pretty scary to see such lethal combinations in a highly competitive sport, spose that's what happens when you have limitless possibilities and resources in such a competition.

 

[Scottie]

Have read that an owner of an RS200 in Scotland got the 0-60mph in 2.3 with the right tyres and suspension setup.

Also, FAP.

 

[djb160]

Shame about all those deaths that went with those cars.

 

[Madhav]

I actually came across it by accident, but yeah I found it amazing...

 

[djb160]

theres a clip on youtube of one of those cars goin down a bank ending in a large fireball. Too many of those sort of things killed Group B. The fans on the road didn't help, nutty buggers. Awesome cars though.

 

[Madhav]

http://autospeed.com/cms/search/index.html?keywords=early+days+of+turbo&x=0&y=0

Here's the rest of the articles, 1-5.

If you think the rally cars went hard, you wait to you see what they did with Formula 1...

1.5lt ball bearing ceramic turbo engines in the 80's pushing up to 1300hp!!

Eventually turbo usage was banned completely in F1 racing.