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Now, this was just so absolutely nothing what group B was all about! And anyway, if we are talking budget cars for amateurs, group B just must be the least suitable category by far! Group B as a cost reduction class, yeah right, get out of here! The designers of group B surely were just as surprised as you when they learned Citroën wanted to homologate their budget car for amateurs into group B. Surely Pirelli girls know more about designing a rally car than all these Citroën engineers together!
OK, OK. Let's at least try to understand what Citroën had done. So we take a Citroën Visa (about C3 or 206 sized car in modern currency) and strip it of absolutely everything. Once that is done, we strip it even more, off go the steel body panels - according to group B freedom that's going to be replaced not by most expensive composite materials, but plastic. Even the glass from the side windows has to go for clear plastic - too heavy. Then with a certain BHP figure in mind, we give it the smallest engine that can achieve that figure, in fact the same 1360cc engine that was in the Peugeot 104 ZS Evo2, but with the biggest carburetors we can possibly find - group B freedom.... So far you would have a Visa Chrono, but the icing on the cake is the 1000 Pistes (pronounce "Mill pissed"): Add 4x4, but again nothing fancy with complicated and expensive clever diffs, just something that gives it ultimate traction and is still relatively simple.
So, now you have a rally car that despite 4x4 would not weight more than 850kg and with 145BHP it isn't far off the power to weight ratio of a modern class N4 car as Mitsubishi Lancer or Subaru Impreza - but for a fraction of the price!
Genius!
The results proved that this was a very good attempt indeed. The car's best result was Jean-Claude Andruet's 7th place on the Monte 1985. And just before you are asking questions about black ice and loads of retirements, a young Mark Lovell was 12th overall on the 1984 RAC with a Visa 1000 Pistes, a result that had him ahead of David Llewellin's works Nissan Silvia 240RS and embarrassingly close to Roger Clark's group B Prodrive Porsche 911, a result Mark never managed to repeat, not even in full works Sierra Cosworths, when there were no group B supercars around.
|
Model & Evo. (Activity) |
BHP@ RPM |
Torque (Nm)@ RPM |
Length Width Height |
Weight (Kg/BPM Ratio) |
Trans. (W'base) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Visa 1000 Pistes (82-88) |
145/6000 | 165/5500 | 3740.1555.1398 | 850 (5.8) | 4x4 (2426) |
|
Visa Chrono (82-88) |
145/6000 | 165/5500 | 3740.1555.1398 | 760 (5.2) | FWD (2426) |
|
Visa Super (81-83) |
210 | 0 | 3740.1555.1398 | 860 (4.1) | RWD (2426) |
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