Art of rally parking lot drivers#

The pebble v2 competed in the WRC for eight seasons and only picked up 19th, 19th, 18th and 12th overall in the manufacturer’s championship in the years where they even scored any points. Of course, I’m talking about the Porsche 911 Skoda 130RS. While all of this was going on, outside of the limelight we had another manufacturer, using a rear-wheel drive and rear-engined design to gain great success in one of the lower classes. The first campaign in 1978 was won by ‘Maximum Attack’ Fin Markku Alén in his Fiat 131 Abarth, and the title would go back and forth between Fiat and Ford with their Escort MK II for four years in a row.

Art of rally parking lot drivers#

Skoda 130RS aka pebble v2Īs the late 1970s rolled in, the cars continued to get more powerful and the WRC that had previously only been for manufacturers, finally introduced a drivers table to go alongside it. The BMW was a beautiful car but was handcuffed in its prime and was therefore never given the opportunity to capitalize on its potential. They never had the chance of a full-time assault on the championship and the following three years would be dominated by the Lancia Stratos.

It hugely disrupted their efforts in the inaugural WRC season in 1973, and by the time things had settled, it was too late. Sadly for BMW, just as it was hitting its stride, the big oil crisis of the early ’70s took hold. The 2002 picked up victories in Austria, Portugal and its native Germany, even winning the European Rally Championship in 1971 with Polish driver Sobiesław ‘sobi’ Zasada behind the wheel.

This car is very much revered when it comes to the road-going version, but it actually had a fairly strong rallying pedigree in the early ’70s. However, a car that is often forgotten about, at least in rallying terms, is the BMW 2002Ti, or ‘das 220’ in art of rally.