When The WRC Met Its Match - The Era Of The Kit Car
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ย. 2024
- The 1990's remains one of the WRC's all-time greatest eras. However, in the shadow of the titanic battles among world-class manufacturers and drivers, sat a support class with cars that brought the heat just as much as their 4WD cousins.
Big thank you to @TheRUBrally for his help on this video- check out his recap of the 1998 World Rally Championship here: • WRC 1998 - When Motors...
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Sources Used:
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en.wikipedia.o...
tech-racingcars...
en.wikipedia.o...
archive.ph/201...
web.archive.or...
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archive.ph/201...
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dirtfish.com/r...
www.wrcwings.t...
Music Used:
In The Nexus by SBA
Oceandrive by ULTRAWAVE
80's Tilt by Bihler
Reverse the Geometry by Harris Heller
Apex by FSCHR / Vladmsorensen
Hope by Aries Beats
Artifact by Neon Deflector
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#WRC #worldrallychampionship #Kitcars
An underrated era of the WRC?
Definitely
Might be because it was my childhood but the late 90s early 00s was the best era of rally for me
not just wrc
the 2litre naturally aspirated era of the 90s is definitively underrated in motorsport as a whole, just look at btcc in those times
Yeah absolut underratet. But it is kinda understandebel. Back the thair was only Television or have to be on on the Spot. And TV was Focused on the "big" players. So you kinda had to be a dedicated fan. Or may I just were to young to notice it. Never the less , the Body Kit Kit Cars made an huge impression on me. Thx for this documentary ❤
Dude never. The best era
How good are you on tarmac ?
French manufacturers : Oui
Lies again? West Route 66
As a child who grew up on a diet of V-Rally 2 and late 90's British Rally Championship season reviews, I adore the F2 cars.
Smaller Super Tourers, but with mudflaps and a gloriously high revving NA engine - some of the most nostalgic cars for me in all of rallying.
V rally 2 was one of my introductions to rallying too
The sound of those engines is legendary.
Some points to keep in mind.
The 2l kit cars were allowed to have almost 300kg less minimum weight than the WRC cars.
This resulted in the opportunity to use softer tyres and the weight advantage outweighed the power deficit (although the Citroen were rumored to have north of 300hp) and on tarmac traction was also pretty good.
So, close to WRC power but much lighter.
Awesome times.
With Rally2 getting faster in 2025 and Rally1 losing hybrid we might see something like this again.
Altough it would kill the class in 3 years time, it's going to be glorious!
I wonder if there's gonna be any proper seperation between rally 1 and 2, especially as we've already seen rally 2 cars beating rally 1 cars, even if just due to weather conditions
@@Randomii666 Yes but i believe rally2 is populair at the moment so we will have to see.
Rally 1 is gonna lose hybrid? Strange
@@A-dood Yeah they said it was to expensive and complicated and would increase costs to much.
The 306 maxi will always be a stunner to me.
Gilles Panizzi was unreal on tarmac with kit cars .
Closely followed by Le Petit Bug
@@OsellaSquadraCorse Philippe
Even faster with the Peugeot 206 ;)
@@nuukkismotorsport8153 He was a suberb tarmac man lol
YES, I love the kit car era. The sounds are incredible and I always love fwd
“Love fwd” 😂😂😂
@@aaronbryan5095 ?
@@aaronbryan5095👈 found the fake car guy
its one of those super specific things ive been obsessed for a while now, kit cars were amazing and in my opinion the epitome of the 90s. Light, NA, flared fenders with masters of tarmac driving them. What more do you want? This wouldnt have happened without Gran Turismo 4 that actually used the xsara kit car in the game and it was the only rally car using a 2wd system so i had to dig into that....and the rest is history. I'm planning to build one of those cars one day.
There are already plenty of us trying to build copies as close as we can. I am doing a 106 maxi and a few friends are doing the same, friends are building 306 maxis and one is reproducing all parts from his original 306 maxi so accurate reproductions can be made. The 90s will never die!
Trying any of the Kit Cars on a sim like RBR really gives you a taste on how insane this things were. The car wanting to be on the redline all the time it's NOT an exaggeration when in 2 sec you are in 4th gear and it's a wildly different experience compared to driving anything else.
Living in Corsica, i had the chance to see WRC juste near m'y school every year.
Kit cars were so good to.see and hear.
2.0 l N/A @9000 RPM was huuuge.
Like most people i loved this period in rallying, i competed at national level in the UK for over 20 years, now i would not walk to the end of my drive the watch the WRC pass, the WRC cars now are so divorced from what we could all buy from a dealership. I am convinced that another Group B type ban will happen sooner or later and that rallying as we knew it is finished !
Thanks for video, brought back some great memories.
I do agree the new wrc cars just don't have the magic of the old ones
@@JackohMotors I kinda hope that more manufacturers get into WRC2, I honestly have a lot of fun watching them this season. They can get surprisingly close to the back of the pack of WRC1, oliver solberg drove phenomenally in sweden
I miss when each car on the grid has a distinct appearance and sound, the new cars are quite cool in my opinion but they are just too samey and honestly a little bit boring. It's why I think the group b era is so beloved.
This is why I love throwing my Xsara VTS around, no VVTI no VVL no fancy crap. Just pure 2L goodness. One of the greatest sounding 4cyl engines
WRC really needs to bring back an F2 style class. Simple cars based on actual factory models, 2wd and small displacement engines. Make rally cheap again, at least for manufacturers if not actual private teams.
This class would later spawn one of the most junior series of rallying that was equally exciting to watch and that's JWRC.
Also, in JWRC, Suzuki dominated it later on with it claiming what I remember was 3 or 4 championship titles in a row with their Swift JWRC which in return spawned one of Japan's hot hatch at that time with the Swift Sport.
Suzuki, then on a high, went on and tried the WRC proper with their SX4 WRC but alas, that thing didn't perform well as it was overweight, taller than the other cars thus a higher center of gravity and for some reason, often breaking down or lacking pace against its competitors like the Ford Focus.
Awesome cars, I think the 306 is my favourite !
Kinda interesting to see those lower spec car that only 2WD fight for victory in flowing tarmac stage like France & Italy, my fav is definitely The 306 from 1997 and the underrated Xsara 1999 which won the rally thanks to Bugalski
We had a preview of all this with the Renault 11 Turbo of Jean Ragnotti leading the Tour de Corse 1987 for a long time.
As a owner of such kit car I can tell you one thing. Maybe they are not particularly fast but they are very forgiving cars and had just crazy amounts of grip 😄 I have a Ford Puma kit car that I'm building on my own, so more of a junior class machine but still probably the best car I've ever driven. Drives literally like a gokart at any given speed. Plus I was always loving this wide arches, they are just sooo appealing 😄
I remember watching the Tour de Corse double podium happen live on Eurosport in 1999, when they experimented with live WRC rally coverage for the final rally stage. Such a shame that this TV format wasn't adopted.
And that engine sound... that high intensity high rev wail is just epic. Like a god is pissed off at something and just _snarls!_
Good stuff! Happy to see that the 90s rallying community is still going strong :)
Got to keep the dream alive!
Coincidentally when I'm curious about a statement that citroen xsara is the fastest tarmac rally car and your video came in my youtube, thank you for your superb video
F2 goes back further than that. Peugeot campaigned the 309 Gti, while Renault had the clio 16valve which was 1800cc.
Peugeot had introduced a 16 valve power unit XU9 J4RS, based on the existing XU 9 J2. Both at 1905cc but with the torque available with the 88mm stroke in the Peugeot unit and now with a cylider head that could breath well enough for the torque to hang on untill 8k+ rpm, the Clio was now outclassed and uncompetitive so Renault they came up with the 2.0Ltr Clio Williams which more than levelled up the field untill Peugeot came out with the 306, but instead of using the inon block xu10 j4rs 2.0 unit they based their power unit on the ux7 j4 alloy block unit sacrificing some top end power due to that unit having smaller valves, but it was proven in testing that the reduction in mass of the lighter unit more than made up for the power deficit, when is came to speed in the corners due to lower polar moments.
The WRC should have adopted the F2 category, it's what auto makers at the time were selling. Again race on sunday sell on Monday.
The program costing a fraction of the then wrc budget requirements
Yeah, I think F2 (or Group A, Class 7) began in the early 80's, around the same time as the other Classes under Groups B, A and N. When VW won the Group A title in 1986 with the Golf, it probably was an F2 car due to the lack of turbo and 4wd.
Adopting the F2 Class as the main category could've been smart, but I guess 4wd had gained such a place in the sport that many people weren't willing to take the step back. Maybe it was Mitsubishi and Subaru who were most in favour of 4wd, since they also had popular cars to sell for Group N, which they could develop alongside.
@@retardray5701 Don't know if you remember the BRC from mid to late 90's
There was not a single mass producer of cars not involved either in F2 2Ltrs or s1600.
Great sight and just as important, sound.
The only exception to the above was Fiat.
A Stillo was out in GrN run by Walkers?
Andy Dawson looked at the Punto kit car as a preperation company (He has been around since Hillman Imps, Mk2 Escort with coil spring rear end, and Datsun competitions manager) which would have been truly competitive in s1600
Happy days
I'm pretty sure the 1.8 xu7jp4 was only used in the later WRC 206 and WRC xsara, kit cars used xu10j4rs. I think the biggest factor was that the engine was tilted backwards 30°
@@gamernamedjacob 206 wrc used EW 10 unit
The 306 maxi was based on the mi16 xu9j4 engine as it was based on the original 306 s16. I had a 306 years ago with the xu7j4 alloy 1.8, and it was an interesting engine, you could swap parts with the xu10rs from the gti6, the inlet and exhaust manifolds fitted, I had the cams from a gti6 in my little 1.8, it was basically the same engine but alloy block and a short stroke crank. The 'problem' with them was the ecu couldnt be mapped like the one on the gti6, so really they needed a standalone ecu if you built a frankenstien 1.8. Also I never knew anyone get standard power figures out of one on a dyno, peugeot listed them as 112bhp. I never saw anyone go on a dyno and come out with less then 120bhp, mine with just an exhast did 125bhp.
Some corrections or things to be more precise in this video:
1999 PT.1 -> A controversial year for F2, because Renault won without any official team and beating Hyundai that had two official cars. However, Hyundai skipped some rounds and Renault only won because many winning F2 cars raced but didn't enter the 2Litres championship, like Citroen or Peugeot. This meant that Renault took points with many backmarkers, like in sweden, and with a lot of Renault 18, like in Argentina. Which is weird.
1999 PT.2 -> Actually, the Xsaras raced in Sanremo too, but the twisty mountain roads were not the same thing of Catalunya and Corsica, and they were never competitive. None of the two citroens saw the finish.
1999 PT.3 -> In the Tour de Corse 1999 it actually rained hard on a stage, and still Puras was the fastest with slick tyres.
CATALUNYA 1997 -> The 306 Maxi was fighting well with Panizzi and Delecour against the WRC, but the rules allowed the anti-puncture system only to WRC and not to 2Litres cars, and when Panizzi punctured a tyre, it was over for him.
THE DECADENCE -> In 2000 the Kit Cars had the minimum wieght raised from 960 kg to 1 ton, and in 2001 FIA added a flange to the air intake that made the Kit Cars uncompetitive, and generally nonsensical.
Thank you for the notes! Very interesting stuff it seems I completely missed while doing my research.
R.I.P. PHILIPPE BUGALSKI, WE MISS YOU.
I grew up with the S1600 and since then I love FWD rally cars. Didn't know so much about the F2 tho!
Great video
Good video, thank you! As a Finn, following rally since the late 70s, I feel like there has been zillions of changes, for cars, classifications, rules, stages, speed, gravel to tarmac....and a whole bunch of totally different kind of localised rallies but still on international level. We have always had like 10 different level/classes of cars and rallies. It is and has been the same organisation changing rules and cars every year to make rally even more international and interesting to both car companies and people. This year is going to be a "gap year" cause now the rules are......😮😢😢😂😂. And Kalle is having fun with all kinds of things, which moves fast❤❤. That is maybe the "biggest" change that the new generation is bringing with them? I am 23 and I am going to have fun, good for you Kalle❤. Ok, he has been driving since he was 8 yrs. old. First official, international rally at the age of 10 yrs. old.
This is a super video!! Congrats mate 😉
Thanks for all the help!
Still a big fan of these F2 Kit Cars myself, and always will be. These are some of the cars that are more interesting in the 90s rally spectrum and added a flavor to the championships they are in. The 306 Maxi II, the Xsara, the Team Diac Megane, and the Hyundai Coupe EVO II will always get me on chokehold whenever this category gets mentioned.
I bought my 206 CC (GTi but convertible) because this era made me fall in love with 2L NA blocks.
Great Video, and a good a reminder of forgotten Rallye legend cars like the Seat Ibiza and the 3 French Cars (Peugeot 306, Renault Megane Coupé und Citroen Xsara).
I remember playing those cars a lot in some rallye game on play station at the time, forgot which game it is though... its just to long ago. :D
My favourite of those cars is the Peugeot 306 for sure. It just looked really cool in that white/blue livery.
I'd argue the 306 had one of the best liveries of the 90's!
Great docu, I am proud of our Skoda for their successes in this category
Great video.Loved the Kit Cars and their giant killing antics, especially the Peugeot 306 Maxi👍❤️!
As an owner of a megane rally car, these were absolute beasts. Planning on putting the blue and yellow livery from the megane maxi on mine
There is nothing to this day, that sounds anything like a Peugeot 306 Maxi F2 at 10 000 rpm, and that 's something i really wish we could recreate with todays current breed of rally cars 👍
Ive always seen these cars in videos and games and wondered what they were, thanks for the video!
Excellent video, I still have VWM parts catalogues from back then, and in the early 2000 Vw ran the 16v in a mk4 here in the US.
The 2WD kit cars were savages on the tarmac roads as they would just go so fast while banging off the rev limiter and it was definitely fun to watch but nowadays it missing that magical spark in my opinion
Also shoutout to those liverys, cheesy yet fun.
Brilliant video mate, proper quality content!
Thank you so much, glad you enjoyed it!
Brilliant video, i am now a subscriber.
Welcome to the club :)
Oh boy I can't believe that I heard my car's name. Renault 18 (but GTL)
Also the Renault 18 was the most successful rally car in Argentina
I'll never forget my PS2 Collin McRae rally game back in '04 with the Citroen Xsara on it's cover.
Will never forget the first time i saw 306 maxi in action, 2001 Hebros rally, Bulgaria!
Loved the soundtrack of these machines.
Really wish I could build or buy something comparable to a kit car. I saw someone driving one in Dirt Rally 2, and holy hell... That thing drives exactly how I want a car to drive. I've never seen a better example of a car that "dances" through the corners with the driver than that.
This is my personal favourite class of all time purely due to the sheer number of manufacturers competing in it, as well as how close these kit cars were to those of which you could walk into a dealership and buy at the time. There was even companies like Dimma back in the day which would take your Mk1 Clio or Peugeot 306 and make it look like its rallying counterpart.
I'm a simple man I see a Citroen AX I hit like
Hey y'all, imagine an alternative scenario for year 2000. Each team would have to build a 2-liter kit car to be able to win the asphalt WRC rounds. It would be quite comical, but also very interesting to watch 950kg, FWD n/a 2-liter two door Impreza, Corolla, Focus... Mitsubishi would have to switch for 2 or 3-door hatchback Mirage. Peugeot and Seat would give their drivers 306 and Ibiza, and Skoda would swapped 2-litre engines into Felicia or even build ad hoc newer 2-liter Fabia...
I would liked to watch them, especially a Subaru Impreza Maxi based on 2 door WRC. PRODRIVE would have to swap metal wheel arches to composite ones, took out whole rear wheels drive and plug the hole in a transmission... tune up the engine without turbo... That would be very, very interesting car.
I loved the kit on the Saxo when it first ca,e out, enjoying playing with this and the Seat in Colin Mcrae Rally and V-Rally....and I re,ember the Escort WRC and Imprezza WRC tooked the style of the F2 cha,pionship and into the WRC...Then Richard Burns in the mighty 206 looked epic!!
We need to get back to this
the more modern red Astra kit car in the British championship was slight to behold. This class was better suited for national championships, they should not have run them on the same rallys as WRC then they could have co existed longer, s2000 was never as popular for rally compared to F2, it also sounded better with a NA engine.
Hey!
You've made a great film here. I remember this times very good, and as a hardcore rally fan I'd love to see cars like this in WRC today.
My all time favourite F2 car is Renault MAXI Clio, but it was MAXI Megane that won Polish National Championship in 1997 with WRC cars!!! Polish Championship conststs of about 6-8 rounds, out of which a maximum of 2 are run on gravel, so for an F2 car it was easier. Still Janusz Kulig beat 4 WRC cars accros the season.
I miss those cars.
Cheers from Poland!
My first car was a citroen xsara 1.9d , i always thought that was the most beautiful car ever, (not googly headlights) and i still think so. I kinda miss it now that its gona for scrapper . Now i own a peugeot 207 , gasoline this time and im super happy. The french can really make a good car
I own 2 Renault Megane Coupe after face lift and I would love to make one of them look like a kit-car.
That's why i love and adore my megane coupe...! the handling is amazing and this car can recive alot of abuse and then later ask for more!
Poor Bugalski 😢😢
I like the bit at 0:40 it feels somehow familiar
Reminds me of intros to old racing games
Very interesting... however i note loeb was driving the xsara! 😂
Some folks claim one of the Seb's is the best French rally driver.
They're wrong. It was Jean Ragnotti. In a Renault Clio 😁
I’m sure the RS2000 Maxi was launched late 1997 replacing the updated kit car that had the Cosworth style wheel arches as seen with the bright yellow RS2000 from the 97 BRC
I've always thought that F2 was honestly not that far off from being a FWD group B. Certainly seemed like more of a successor to group B than group A ever was.
Let's go man.
Been a fan of your content for a bit now. Smashing it mate. Please continue,
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed the video.
It may be a gross oversimplification, but practically F2 kit cars were Super Tourers with a lift-kit and a second seat.
video ive been waiting for years. not many ppl know about these cars, this video, Im going to lose my mind if I see another group B video. that is a copy of the other group B videos. as you said hard to find info on these. what other motorsport is there where one lower category is faster than the top category. I used to play sega rally 2 on dreamcast 1st console to have internet connection, full 56k dial up. you could upload your lap times. and the fastest car on the Riviera tarmac track worldwide, top times was set in the 306. When you say Volkswagen wasnt able to homologate the golf on time. I always thought. the reason they are kit cars is due to them not needing Homologation.
What a great video.
Thank you so much, glad you enjoyed!
Great video, as always.
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed.
I miss rally cars sounding half as angry and exciting as these did.
great video thanks
OOOooooo, they did sound good!
Motorsport in general was more fun back then. Should have kept factory spec bodies.
Great content, keep up the good work!
Thank you so much!
Peugeot 306 Maxi my beloved
I went on a test day for the Noble M12 and the citroen saxo s1600 was doing some testing. Lee Noble had a go in the car and it was amazing to watch! Sadly I didn't ask to sit in it but looked great going round.
Neat! Love finding stuff like this about fun things I never paid attention to. Too bad that it was all FWD. That basically disqualified it for me back in the day when I paid attention to motorsports.
Great video. Not something I thought I was interested in. Guess I am now....
Good doc!
Do you have a video of Super 2000 cars in the early 2000's. I only started to know about this category when there was the FIA Super 2000 World rally championship category in the late 2000's. I was only aware of WRC, PWRC and JWRC at the time
That Mégane was gorgeous
It's my favourite F2/Kit Car. Really love the blue and yellow car driven by Martin Rowe and Tapio Laukkanen.
Good man Jackoh thanks for this informative piece on this spectacular championship I absolutely love these savage machines especially the 306 Maxi and Xara kit car 😊keep up the great work your content is top-notch stuff respect 🙏 🫡 👍 😀
Thank you for the support, glad you enjoyed the video!
@JackohMotors you are very welcome jackoh and thanks again 😊
Dry tarmac cars that sounded great
FINALLY someone talking about this! Instant susbscribe! The most interesting, underrated, overshadowed and esoteric story and era in Car Racing history! Thank you for talking about it! Unlike some other youtubers who always talk about the same mainstream stuff like F1, Indycar, Nascar, Group B and so on.
P.S: F2 Kitcars are the fastest tarmac rally cars ever made period and the sound they make is just otherwordly too.
Definitely an overlooked part of the sport. Thank you for the support!
Lovely story
Recently discovered your channel, its great! Have you considered doing a vid on successful but forgotten cars. Cars like the Opel Ascona / Manta, Volvo Amazon, Cossie Saphire, even the the Loeb C4.
I currently have a duology of videos covering forgotten rally cars, though I do plan to cover more of them in the future!
Jackoh, did you see that in a recent WRC video by Jimmy Broadbent he used adesive wombat songs and an opening that I could have sworn was straight up "inspired" by yours (from the flat out series)?
I don't know if the two of you were communicating. I don't think anything that he did was copyright infringing at all, nor wrong in anyway, at worst I think it was a "tip of the hat" to your great series, so that is not why I'm mentioning.
I'm mentioning 'cause from a channel of his size, if he had a tiny bit on the description like "opening inspired by @jackoh motors" maybe there would be traffic coming your way?
I did see that yes haha! I think it may have just been a coincidence or homage or something similar, as I have never been in contact with Jimmy.
I saw that video and immediately thought of flat out too haha! Definitely taken some inspiration
@@yippydoddlecarson6375 Yeah. Also, I've got a few tracks by Adhesive Wombat floating around in my spotify, just because of Jackoh, and every time one comes up I'm taken to flatout. That was one of the great series on youtube, and I envy people who are still to experience it for the first time.
Fantastic video.
v rally memories wow
And thx for your work
I lpve these in dr2 on spain
Xsara and Ibiza for me are the best!
Very instructive
Very nice documentary, as usual. :D The Kit Car class was really underrated. Fun times when lower classes sometimes challenged the top dogs.
Oh man, I loved my Peugeot 306 gti6. So stupid that I took him away.
V-Rally vibes
Sound of this cars are amazing
Anyone got info on the Suzuki Baleno F2?
Didn't Skoda actually win the 2-Litre Cup in 1994 because General Motors Europe, who initially won fell to 4th because Gregoire de Mevius was excluded from Rally Australia due to using illegal fuel?
Škoda .. the king in his class .-)
Seat racing was underrated af, if it was French or Italian instead of Spanish it will be more famous, but is always the same shit
Sebastian Loeb thats all i can say