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Comment by jansan | Hacker News Reader

Rally in the 80s until 1986 was insane. There was the class B with some of the most powerful rally cars ever built. If you see older insane rally videos, it is usually from class B.

The Porsche 959 never participated in group B races, and it would have been really interesting to see it competing with Audi Quattro and Lancia Delta.

unfortunately in 1986 there were several tragic accidents, resulted in the end of group b.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_B

Here are some scenes from group B that give a feeling how intense and dangerous it was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRtyT9WQzdY

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I think the most crazy thing to enter Dakar was the DAF Turbo Twin. https://www.carhutt.com/daf-95-turbotwin-x1/

2400bhp in a truck… See this video of it overtaking one of the rally cars to get an idea how truly crazy that machine was: https://youtu.be/DDGbtUsTv24

That wasn't one of the rally cars, that was the lead rally car, going over 200 km/h over ungraded sand. One of my favorite points in motoracing history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUnWnx_rdps

HP to weight isn't really useful beyond the point where you can put it to the ground. Notice how the truck is doing most of the gaining and overtaking in the rougher sections where it can keep better ground contact than the car.

Always enjoyed this documentary on the topic: "Too fast to race"

https://youtu.be/imXk8u-reUQ

> Rally in the 80s until 1986 was insane. There was the class B with some of the most powerful rally cars ever built

Strictly speaking true; but in practice peak power didn't end up being that critical and rally cars soon became faster even with less power. Also the ultra-high power period only lasted few years, maybe 84-86 or so (modern WRC car produces 380 HP which afaik is more than any 1983 championship competitor)

True, I would also add that a major contributing factor to the danger of the group B era was absolutely horrendous race organization and scheduling, creating dangerous situations for competitors and spectators. Most notably and tragically at Portugal in 1986. While Gr.B cars required great skill, the danger of the cars themselves was perhaps overemphasized by Jean Marie Balestre's FISA to direct blame away from their own organization and on to the manufacturers.

Even today you'll see dangerous conditions in long distance desert racing due to unstructured roads and inadequate crowd barrierrs (for those that travel out to the dune whoops to see things go bad:

( Finke, not the Paris-Dakar )

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-0eTjCfVXs

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJfuZdymPes

I've been a fan of the 959 since seeing the Tamiya version. I'd love for them to re-release the kit so I can finally own one

https://youtu.be/jtODx2kGq0E

https://tamiyabase.com/tamiya-models/58059

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