Jalopnik: rally cars

Warning: This Car May Contain Air Scoops

Peter Orosz — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:30:00 EDT

What you see here is a rally car run by Fiat’s factory racing team in 1975 with great success. It’s called the Fiat Abarth 131/031 Mirafiori 3500 Bertone.

That monster sidepipe sticking out beneath the driver’s side door? It’s connected to a V6 engine, bored from three to 3.5 liters by the good people of Abarth, feeding itself through three twin-choke Webers to send 270 HP at a delicious 6800 RPM to the rear wheels via a De Tomaso Pantera gearbox mounted directly to the rear axle. And just look at those deep-dish rear wheels, clad in their ultrawide Pirellis.

Not bad at all. And that’s before you consider all the lightness added to the car: the glassfiber-aluminum-plexiglass body tips the scales at a featherweight 2470 pounds. The result is a top speed of 160 MPH.

And now for some photographic trickery: the picture you see above was taken with Leica’s weird and wonderful Noctilux lens, whose maximum aperture equals its focal range, allowing for handheld photography at night and a corresponding razor-thin depth of field.

Source—and further reading: 131Abarth.com, Sporting Fiats Club. Photo of red 131 with Noctilux lens: rin/Flickr

What Would You Convert Into A Rally Car?

Matt Hardigree — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:40:00 EDT

The photos today of the Ferrari 308 GTB rally car combined with the VW Thing (which rallied against the Allied Forces) got us thinking again about rally cars. Anything can be a rally racer, whether AWD/FWD/RWD or even 6WD. From the diminutive Kia Rio to the insane Suzuki Escudo, anything can be rallied. Anything...

Just look at today's DOTS retrospective. Would we rally a Porsche 356? Yes. 1977 Olds Custom Cruiser? Yes. 1987 Starion? You see where we're going with this. Assuming unlimited classes, and most rally series have many classes, what would you convert for dirt-ice-mud-roading?

[Photo: SpecialStage]

Professional Hoonage: A History Of Rally Jumps

Mark Arnold — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:15:00 EST

Ok, enough of all this drunken amateur Leap Day hoonage. I mean, I've got nothing against ~~hosers~~ Canadians killing time up in the great white north; but I think it's time to see how the professionals do it. So, we present to you a montage in tribute to the illustrious history of rally jumps. Spanning over many years and countries, these guys definitely knew what they were doing.

[YouTube]

What Would Make The Best American Rally Car?

Matt Hardigree — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:30:00 EST

Snow, slush, ice, mud, tornadoes and windstorms have led to less-than-stellar driving conditions in many parts of the country. It's not even safe to be driving a giant wiener. When the driving conditions get bad in this country we generally turn to trucks and sport-utlitly-vehicles for help. But there's a magical place, a place called "the rest of the world." And people who live in this mysterious land see a muddy road and think Ford Escort instead of Jeep Wrangler, Peugeot 205 instead of Chevy Tahoe and Renault Clio instead of Ford F-150. These are the people with the Spirit of the Rally.

While we've had a bit of a renaissance with the American rally racing seen, it's sad to see that most of the cars are not America. We may have great American drivers, like Travis Pastrana, but he still drives a deer dodging Subaru WRX STI. Though you'll see the odd Camaro at rallying events, it's still a sport dominated by everyone else. We think if you're going to have a great renaissance of the American rally, you're going to need a great American car to do it. But what car? We leave that to you to decide. (h/t to Franzouse for the inspiration)

Ninja Rally Fan Avoids Peril, Plots Revenge

Matt Hardigree — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:00:00 EST

What do you get when you cross a baker and a ninja? A dead baker. Never cross a ninja. What you see here is all the proof you need that rally fans are the most hardcore racing fans out there (Oh, you say you camped for a day outside the Texas Motor Speedway in your 38-foot luxury RV? It just doesn't measure up to spending the night with two of your friends cramped into a LeCar on a freezing night along the Vistula just to see your favorite rally drivers, four seconds at at time). A driver spins his hatch towards the crowd and this fan transforms into a ninja to avoid getting crushed. [DPCCars]