Escort service

1979.
Far from just being a dreary slab of self-indulgent navel-gazing grunge whining on behalf of Slaphead Billy Corgan and his dysfunctional Pumpkins, 1979 was actually a period of 12 months that occurred in the late 1970s. As late into the late 1970s as possible, as it turned out. And 1979, judging by the following, was a very long time ago.

• Malcolm Fraser was PM of Australia, and at that point still had his pants on
  
• The developing legend, corporate trademark and later self-parodying cliche that became Peter Brock won the Repco Round-Australia Trial in the new Commodore, as well as Bathurst by six laps in the old Torana, in between a lot of pants-work of a different description
  
• Some old bag called Thatcher was newly in charge of the Poms. Didn't amount to much though
  
• Bon Scott, John Lennon and John Bonham were all still breathing, and in Bon and Bonzo's case, skolling beverage by the hectalitre
  
• Chappell's underarm problem, Ronald Reagan's frightening ascent to the seat of all power in the Western world, and Bob Hawke's speech about his bum with reference to employment relations vis-a-vis the America's Cup, were still years into the future
  
• St George won the comp
  
• And the Ford Motor Company won the world rally manufacturers' championship with their Mark II Escort RS1800 and a bunch of fear-deficient Scandie lunatics called Bjorn, Hannu, Ari and Stig.

Since those nostalgic days of yesteryear, to state the bleeding, haemorraging obvious, a lot has changed. Not for St George of course, who are still to win anything other than Easiest Dirtied Playing Strip In The NSWRL/ARL/NRL, 1908-present. But since Ford's 1979 manufacturers title, world rally has become totally unrecognisable. The then-state-of-the-art Escort RS1800s which the heroes of the era once fishtailed through the forests to victory would be utterly trounced by a current model Golf diesel driven by your grandma, let alone the modern crop of turbocharged, bewinged, all-wheel-drive, gravel-spitting monsters which contest the world title today. The Escorts, legendary in their own lifetime, were rendered obsolete overnight with the introduction of the turbo AWD Audi Quattro A1 in the early 80s; so compared to today's factory rally weapon, the Focus WRC, the rear-wheel-drive, non-turbo, four-cylinder Escort RS1800 looks like an absolute toy.














Faaaarrrkkk

















Told yers

Ancient, outclassed, prehistoric shitbox or not, the RS1800 Escort was able to boast one competition feature which subsequent world rally championship entries from Ford have never offered on their options list: a world championship. At least until yesterday afternoon on a winding strip of forest road south of Raglan, when a 1-2 finish for the factory Focuses (Foci?) in the Rally of NZ secured the world title for the Blue Oval for the first time in 27 years. And you local Ford tragics thought it was a bit of a hassle waiting eight years for another Bathurst win. Ford's inability to win the world title even when blessed with the fastest car in the field (since the introduction of the original Focus WRC in 1998) and some of the most talented driver lineups in WRC history (case in point, the pairing of Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz throughout the late '90s) has long been the standing joke of the WRC paddock. Regardless of the speed of their equipment and the talent of their drivers, the Ford works rally team could traditionally not be relied upon to correctly organise and/or host a pissup in a brewery.















Colin McCrash, about thirty seconds away from retiring from another WRC event

So what's changed this year? Have Ford finally cracked it? Has 27 years of incompetence finally given way to a new, hard-edged competitive spitrit?

Ah, not so much. More that all the other decent factory teams have fucked off to do other things, basically.

Citroen, who most recently dominated WRC, pulled out at the end of last year to develop their new C4 WRC car for 2007, leaving the privateer Kronos team to propel Seb Loeb to his inevitable third consecutive drivers championship. Ford may have won the manufacturers' title, but they couldn't stop a bunch of privateers in a five year old car winning the drivers'. Top work, BP-Ford World Rally Team.
















You can't park 'ere. We are too excluuusive.

Peugeot, who dominated the first half of this decade, quit rallying at the end of last year to have another crack at Le Mans sports prototypes - which they'd pulled out of in the mid-90s to develop their 206 WRC car.
















TOTALly sideways

Toyota, who dominated for half the 1990s with their Celicas and Corollas, ditched world rally years ago in order for their rally team to spearhead their push into Formula One - which kinda explains Ralf Schumacher's affinity for gravel traps, it's what the baseline setup is designed for.











One Ralf prepared earlier

Mitsubishi, who dominated the other half of the 1990s, pulled out of rallying in recent years in order to go broke. Fortunately, they've been helped in this by the selfless folk at the ABC.












Buy one of these and help keep good honest Aussie bogans in work - both at Mitsubishi's Adelaide plant as well as the nation's Highway Patrol units.

And Subaru, who won all the events which the other teams didn't in the last dozen years, might as well have not turned up given that they're contractually obliged to run on Pirelli tyres. They'd get better grip from Cheng Shins.




















Two potential scenarios in which a Subaru Impreza WRC might win some form of competitive motor race in the proximal future

Subaru mightn't have won the actual motorsport component of the Rally of New Zealand, but they comfortably stitched up the competition in the publicity stakes, with perennial MotoGP world champion (perennial meaning 'every year starting with a 2 that isn't 2006') Vale Rossi turning up in a privately entered matt-black '05 Impreza WRC, personally funded out of the spare change in the back pocket of his leathers, and having a bit of a go at playing in the mud with the big boys.

Having lasted approximately half of one stage on his only previous WRC outing, in a Michelin-backed 206 in the 2002 Rally of Great Britain, Rossi took it fairly easy. By 'fairly easy' read 'eleven minutes down by the second day'. To begin with he was slower than a wet weekend in Hamilton - ironically enough - and the strain and effort was telling on the gollywog-haired Italian. He described the early, torrentially sodden stages on Friday as being very long and draining, and requiring huge amounts of concentration, respect and patience. 'Just like the drive to Bologna Airport'. However, by Sunday he was setting comparable times to some of the WRC regulars, and while Rossi is in absolutely no danger whatsoever of actually being competitive anytime soon, there might be the makings of a half-decent rally driver there. In about five years, once he's become sufficiently bored with riding around in circles being pursued by half a dozen Hondas.

In the meantime, next year sees the return of the works Citroen team, plus Mitsubishi (if they can scrounge the cash), Peugeot and FIAT as Super 2000 teams, Subaru may end up on decent tyres (they're down at Bob Jane T-Marts as we speak), and Suzuki will debut their new WRC car aiming for going full-time in 2008, when they'll also be rejoined by Hyundai. So who'll come out on top?

Who else?












All hail Sebastian Loeb and the Citroen C4, 2007 World Rally Champions.
Better pencil him in for 2008 as well.

The Doctor is OUT.