You make a good point (though including "exploding popularity" in the explanation of how the sport was killed is a bit odd...). But then again, the point of racing is supposedly to improve the breed. I am pretty sure that the technologies from rally cars find their way into production cars more readily than those from say Formula 1. And the Audi Quattro sure kicked off the technology race.

By the way, a colleague of mine owned an Audi Quattro Sport back in the late 90's. It was a very complex car, many components were unique to this model and hand-built. Maintenance was difficult, very expensive and very frequent. He bought a Subaru Impreza WRX "for those 8 months of the year that the Audi spends in the workshop".

> though including "exploding popularity" in the explanation of how the sport was killed is a bit odd...

The issue with rallying is that it used to take place in remote locations with little or no crowds. There are no safety barriers to protect the audience. Additionally, the rally audiences got crazed by deadly dangerous activities like standing in front of the cars until the last second or trying to touch the cars when they zoomed past (there's a story that a mechanic once found a severed finger in the side mirrors of a car).

It became impossible for the race organizers to control the crowds and make the race events somewhat safe. That's why "exploding popularity" was an issue.

Group B was terminated after an accident in 1986 Rally Portugal (?) when a Ford RS-20 car flew off the track and into the audience with dozens of fatalities and serious injuries. This was only a few weeks after the fatalities of driver Henri Toivonen and co-driver Sergio Cresto in the Rally of Corsica. Toivonen's last interview concluded with: "these cars are too fast for the human mind, if you lose concentration, you're dead" [paraphrased from Finnish], then he closed the car door, drove off and was never seen again.

This is how crazy it was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYIH7ApCxoM

Thanks for this one, and the "heel and toe" explanation in the other comment.

I spent a couple minutes on the Wiki page and this little picture sort of sums up rally racing - they soberly resisted writing "flying" in the label that says "Toivonen driving the Manta 400".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Toivonen , http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Henri_Toivonen...

What he means with the sport being killed is what happened _after_ Group B was cancelled. Group B was replaced with Group A cars which at that time had much less power thus making the races much less exciting for spectators.

>exploding popularity (hundreds thousands of people lining the stages without the protection of normal circuit racing) and a series of deadly accidents, eventually leading to the end of the Group B category

I know next-to-nothing about rally racing, but that last photo in the article must highlight what you're talking about: a TV cameraman standing about six feet away from a speeding car on a dirt road. Yikes!

Actually more like this: http://www.motormavens.com/emAlbum/albums/Contributors/Patri...

Portuguese rally fans especially were completely insane back then.

O dear. If my calculations are correct, those guys in the street have around eight tenths of a second to get out of the way.

Never tell me the odds

This guy is actually relatively safe, because he is in the "inside" of the turn. The most dangerous places are the "outsides" of turns, where cars out-of-control are more likely to go. I believe that it is a common security measure to place people on the insides rather than the outsides.

They were called "The Killer B's" at the time.