30 unlikely competition cars

Not necessarily as their maker intended

Motorsport was already well established by the turn of the 20th century. Then as now, many cars were designed and built specifically to take part in competition.

But there is another, and in some ways more interesting, category of car: those which performed very well in high-level motorsport despite their originally modest specifications.

Here are 30 examples from across the ages, listed in alphabetical order – and, other than this dramatic opening image, all photos show the road-car versions.

1. Alpine A110

Rallying was in Jean Rédélé’s blood even before he established his sports-car company. When he did this in 1955, he named it Alpine, reputedly to celebrate his second place overall and first in class in the previous year’s Alpine Rally, driving a Renault 4CV.

His third and best-known model was the A110, which started out with the mechanicals of the deceptively humble Renault 8. It performed well in competition, but everything changed when Rédélé began fitting it with the larger engine from the Renault 16.

After this, the A110 became a rallying monster. After losing out to the Porsche 911 by only two points in the 1970 International Championship for Manufacturers, it dominated the same series the following year, achieving double the score of its nearest rival.

In 1973, the World Rally Championship (initially contested by manufacturers rather than drivers) was inaugurated. Of the 13 rounds, A110s entered 11 and won six. By the end of the year Alpine had scored 147 points to Fiat’s 84 and Ford’s 76.

2. Austin 1800

The Austin 1800, which could just about be described as a vastly extended Mini, was absolutely not the sort of car anyone would expect to do well in an international rally, unless the rally in question happened to be the London-Sydney Marathon.

The first Marathon was held towards the end of 1968, and several teams (including that of what had recently become known as British Leyland) guessed that reliability would be a far greater factor than performance.

This turned out to be true, as you’ll realise when you find out what the winning car was.

It wasn’t an 1800, but the example crewed by a certain Mr Hopkirk, along with Tony Nash and Alec Poole, finished an extremely creditable second overall having been penalised only 56 points, compared with 13,790 for the last-placed finisher.

3. Austin Seven

In standard form, the Seven was an early ‘people’s car’, offering family transport (but very little performance) to buyers who couldn’t afford anything more fancy.

None of this suggests a career in motorsport, but an enormous amount of engine development – including supercharging – together with the occasional use of single-seat bodies gave rise to great success in racing, trialling and record breaking.

Sevens were also important in the early careers of both Colin Chapman and Bruce McLaren, respectively the founders of today’s Lotus and McLaren companies.

Well over a quarter of a million Sevens were manufactured from 1922 to 1939, and many are still being used for competition today.

4. Austin-Healey Sprite

The exact opposite of the fabled ‘hairy-chested sports car’, the original Sprite was a small roadster with a 948cc BMC A-series engine. It was intended to be fun to drive, rather than to provide startling straight-line performance.

There was no hope that it would challenge for overall honours in any major sporting event, but success of a different kind came very quickly.

Three Sprites dominated the 1.0-litre class in the 1958 Alpine Rally, not long after production had started. The following year, three Sebring Sprites (uprated and with different bodies, but based on the same basic car) did the same thing in the 12-hour race at Sebring, Florida.

These and later Sprites went on to perform splendidly in similar events, and in the little-known but extremely entertaining sport of autotesting, where their ability to change direction astonishingly quickly served them very well.

5. Citroën 2CV

The apparent unsuitability of the memorably slow 2CV makes up large part of its appeal to competition drivers of a strange yet admirable mindset.

2CV Cross, held on loose-surfaced tracks, began in the 1970s and is still hotly – and sometimes violently – contested today.

The idea of transferring the car to circuit racing was conjured up in Belgium, where a series of races of varying length, including a 24-hour event at Spa-Francorchamps, began to be held annually. British enthusiasts who visited the Spa race in 1988 were inspired to create their own version, held originally at Mondello Park in Ireland but these days at Snetterton in Norfolk.

In Belgium, the related Citroën Dyane is also eligible, and radical modifications are permitted in the Prototype class. The UK series is open to 2CVs only, and the cars are nearer to standard specification. In each case, the top drivers are very talented and the quality of racing is extraordinarily high – Formula One driver and race-winner George Russell has competed in the past.

6. Citroën DS

The DS is remembered not only for its elegance but for its incredibly futuristic design. The fact that it was also a very successful rally car has, regrettably, been almost forgotten.

Major successes include wins in the 1959 Rallye Monte-Carlo, the 1962 1000 Lakes (as the Rally Finland was then known) and, controversially, the 1966 Monte.

Another DS, driven by Lucien Bianchi and Jean-Claude Ogier, was comfortably leading the 1968 London-Sydney Marathon when it was all-but destroyed in a collision with a non-competing car on what was supposed to be a closed section of road less than 100 miles from the end of the 10,000-mile route.

Ogier was later quoted as saying that he felt this was an act of sabotage, but “we did not make any more of it, because that would not have been useful”.

7. Citroën Xantia

The Xantia was Citroën’s rival to the Ford Mondeo, Nissan Primera and other medium-sized hatchbacks of the 1990s.

Some models had powerful engines, and a development of the standard hydropneumatic suspension reduced body lean almost to zero in the Activa model, but in general the car was not an obvious choice for use in motorsport.

The fact that it actually did very well is almost entirely down to Jean-Luc Pallier, who built a competition version with a hugely uprated 2.0-litre turbo engine and four-wheel drive, but retained the hydropneumatic system, albeit in an advanced form.

With this car, Pallier won the French Rallycross Championship in 1994, 1995 and 1996, and then again in 1998 and 1999. In the first three of those years he also finished third in the highest-performance division of the European championship.

8. Fiat 600

Less familiar to most people than the slightly later 500, the 600 was nevertheless a very successful economy car, and the first Fiat to combine unibody construction and a rear-mounted engine.

If you’ve ever driven one, you’ll know that straight-line performance wasn’t its best feature.

However, a derivative known as the Abarth 1000 TC was wildly successful in saloon racing, winning the lowest-capacity class in the European Touring Car Championship in 1965, 1966, 1967 and 1969.

In fairness, no other manufacturer took part in 1967, but when there was opposition, the 600-based Abarth demolished it.

9. Fiat 131

The most evocative Italian rally car of the 1970s was surely the mid-engined, Ferrari-powered Lancia Stratos, which looked like a winner even when it was parked.

This could not have been said of the Fiat 131, a boxy rear-wheel-drive saloon roughly comparable to the Ford Escort. Like the Escort, though, it was outstandingly successful in competition form.

The 131 Abarth Rally was based on a lightweight body created by Bertone and powered by an Abarth-developed 2.0-litre 16-valve engine with a claimed power output, in later years, of 245bhp.

Despite its relatively ordinary appearance (if you looked past the spoilers, extended wheelarches and livery), the Fiat won 20 rounds of the World Rally Championship – two more than the Stratos – from 1976 to 1981, and picked up the WRC manufacturers’ title in 1977, 1978 and 1980.

10. Ford Cortina

Powered by 1.2- and 1.5-litre versions of Ford’s Kent engine, the Mk1 Cortina was a straightforward but very successful medium-sized saloon launched in 1962.

Things became spicy the following year when Lotus got its hands on the car and applied several modifications, including the fitment of its own Kent-based 1.6-litre Twin Cam engine.

Even the less powerful Cortina GT did well in competition, but the Lotus was something else again. Producing more than 100bhp even in standard form, and a lot more when modified, it proved to be a serious weapon on both race circuits and forest tracks.

11. Ford Escort

Looked at from a wide perspective, the first-generation Escort was simply a replacement for the UK-built Anglia, but when it was launched in 1968 Ford was already fully aware of how much publicity could be gained by doing well in motorsport.

Right from the start, it was available with the Lotus Twin Cam engine. In 1970, Ford went a step further and introduced the RS 1600, which was powered by the even-more potent Cosworth BDA.

Highly tuned versions of the RS 1600 were even-more successful than the larger Lotus Cortina had been in rallying, though not quite to the same extent as the later Mk2 RS 1800, which won the World Rally Championship in 1979. In the UK, Escorts in general were almost the default choice for any rally crew in the 1970s.

The early Escorts also did very well in circuit racing. Notably, Hans Heyer won the 1974 European Touring Car Championship in an RS 1800.

12. Ford Model T

The entire point of the Model T was to provide practical and reliable transport for the ordinary motorist, which it did superbly well.

Since the maximum output of its engine was just 20bhp, motorsport clearly wasn’t part of the brief, but that didn’t stop people using it for that purpose anyway.

From 1908 to 1927, it was produced in far greater numbers than any other car, and parts were plentiful and cheap.

Modifications were made, different engines were sometimes fitted, and a variety of alternative bodies were constructed by aspiring racers around the world, including (in 1947) future five-time F1 drivers’ champion Juan Manuel Fangio.

13. Hillman Hunter

The Hunter is not normally thought of as a competition car, but in 1968 it won one of the most famous rallies ever held.

This was the London-Sydney Marathon, for which the Hunter was prepared on a very tight budget. Most of the money was spent on replacing everything that might break (the rear axle used in the event, for example, came from an Aston Martin DBS) and financing a thorough rebuild during a rest halt in Mumbai (or Bombay as it was then).

With reliability on their side, Andrew Cowan, Colin Malkin and Brian Coyle took the heavy and underpowered but virtually unbreakable Hillman Hunter to victory. They were helped by the unreliability of Roger Clark’s Cortina and the aforementioned accident which befell Bianchi and Ogier’s Citroën, but it was a momentous result all the same.

Five years later, Bernard Unett won his class in nearly every round of the British Production Saloon Car Championship in another Hunter.

14. Hillman Imp

Although it was sold as an inexpensive economy car, the Imp was ready for motorsport action from day one thanks to its rear-mounted, Coventry Climax-derived engine, which could be made to rev beyond 9000rpm and produce well over 100bhp per litre in race trim.

Often branded as Sunbeams rather than Hillmans, Imps were very competitive in their class in international rallies of the 1960s, driven by Andrew Cowan and Rosemary Smith, among many others.

On the race circuits, meanwhile, Bill McGovern won the British Saloon Car Championship (forerunner of today’s British Touring Car Championship) every year from 1970 to 1972 in his own Imp.

Untold numbers of privateers also used Imps – or, in many cases, Imp-engined cars – in many forms of motorsport (even including trials, which they are well suited to), and still do today, decades after production came to an end in 1976.

15. Iso Isetta

What, you may be wondering, could be more absurd than attempting to compete in an international motorsport event with an Isetta bubble car? You’d have to ask Iso, which entered seven examples in the 1954 Mille Miglia road race.

It’s often said that they took the first three positions in the economy car class, but no such class appears to have existed.

Instead, they ran in the category for touring cars up to 750cc (more than three times the capacity of the Isetta’s twin-cylinder two-stroke engine), and the best of them finished 30th – and 176th overall – after taking almost exactly seven hours longer to complete the course than Jean Rédélé’s class-winning Renault 4CV.

Still, five of the Isettas finished the event, and could therefore be said to have beaten the 200 cars that didn’t.

16. Jaguar XJ12C

Perhaps the most startling car to compete in the European Touring Car Championship during the mid 1970s was the coupé version of the Jaguar XJ12.

Developed by Broadspeed with support from British Leyland, the XJ looked and sounded fabulous, and was very quick over a single lap.

Unfortunately, its weight was difficult for the tyres to handle and there were reliability problems, which left the door open for BMW to dominate the series.

Most of this could have been attended to with more funding, and the Jaguar might well have become a race winner, but the money stopped coming at the end of the 1977 season, and that was the end of that.

17. Lada Riva

Based on the Fiat 124 and part of the series known these days as Lada Classic, the Riva was not what you might call a high-performance car in standard form.

It was, however, heavily modified (with more power and less weight) in order to compete in Group B rallying. Outright wins in major international events were out of the question, but it did well at a lower level, particularly in eastern Europe.

The next step was a far more advanced rally machine based on the Samara hatchback. This had a mid-mounted, turbocharged engine and detachable front and rear body sections of a similar type to those used for the Peugeot 205 T16.

The Samara project was canned when Group B cars became ineligible for rallying after the 1986 season.

18. Mercedes-Benz 280E

In both duration and distance, the second London-Sydney Marathon held in 1977 was far longer than the original event had been nine years earlier, so durability was even more important than before.

Rather than a more obviously sporty model, Mercedes-Benz decided to enter the 280E, a saloon from the 123-series family with a fuel-injected 2.8-litre petrol engine.

Seven cars were used, with crews of various nationalities. Andrew Cowan and Colin Malkin repeated their previous success in the Hillman Hunter, this time with Mike Broad looking after the navigation.

Three of the 280Es failed to finish, but three others came home in second, sixth and eight positions.

19. Mercedes-Benz 300SEL

If preparing a Mercedes-Benz 280E for a marathon made sense if you thought about it for long enough, developing a 300SEL for circuit racing seemed just plain crazy.

The 300SEL was a large luxury saloon usually powered by a straight-six engine, but in the case of one model fitted with the mighty 6.3-litre V8 first used in the even larger 600.

AMG, then a stand-alone company rather than the Mercedes subsidiary it later became, created a competition version called the Rote Sau (‘red pig’).

Unlikely as it looked, this monster qualified fifth for the 1971 Spa 24-hour race and finished second, three laps behind the winning Ford Capri RS 2600, but 11 or more laps ahead of everything else.

20. MG J-type

Although it was produced for less than two years, the J-type was one of the most popular of the early MGs, achieving nearly 2500 sales.

Most of those were accounted for by the neat little two-seat J2 (pictured), which can still be seen competing in classic motorsport events today.

The hottest version was the supercharged J4, which had a lightweight body and, at 72bhp, double the power output of the J2.

This was more than the rest of the car could easily handle, so J4 drivers had to be talented and brave. This certainly applied to Irish driver Hugh Hamilton, who failed to win the 1933 Tourist Trophy race only because a disastrous late pitstop lasted four mins longer than it should have done.

21. MG Midget

The first MG with Midget as the official model name rather than a nickname was a slightly more expensive version of the second-generation (non-frog-eye) Austin-Healey Sprite.

Like the Sprite, it did far better in motorsport than its mild performance in standard form suggested. Important success included class wins in the 1964 Nürburgring 1000km and the 1965 Sebring 12 Hours.

In the 1965 Targa Florio, held on public roads in Sicily, a Midget finished second – by just over a minute after seven hours of competition – to an Abarth-Simca, but managed to beat an Alpine A110.

Midget production ended in 1980, but standard and modified versions are still providing entertainment to both drivers and spectators in several types of competition even today.

22. Mini

The original Mini is another example of an inexpensive economy car which somehow achieved great success in motorsport.

Among many other achievements, it won the RAC Rally in 1965, and Rallye Monte-Carlo in 1964, 1965 and 1967. On the road, it also won the 1966 Monte, but along with several other British cars it was excluded that year in circumstances which could, at the mildest, be described as controversial.

On race tracks, Minis won the European Touring Championship in 1964 and the equivalent UK series five times between 1961 and 1979 – just part of an enormous run of victories in many countries. And they’re still campaigned in historic motorsport today.

In autotesting, the Mini has been a winning car for well over half a century, often in cut-down Special form, and latterly with a Vauxhall Nova engine and gearbox under the bonnet.

23. Peugeot 504

From 1968 to 1983, the Peugeot 504 was sold as a medium-sized saloon, a practical estate and a beautiful coupé or convertible, and continued in production for much longer as a pick-up.

Unless fitted with a 3.0-litre V6 engine, as it sometimes was, the 504 was never quick, but it was very tough, and correspondingly popular in Africa, where it proved to be a very effective rally car.

In fact, it was victorious on five rounds of the World Rally Championship on that continent from 1975 to 1978 – two in Kenya, two in Morocco and one in Côte d'Ivoire.

A 504 entered in the 1977 London-Sydney Marathon didn’t win, but it did finish fifth, beating all but two of the aforementioned Mercedes 280Es.

24. Renault 4CV

French enthusiasts jumped at the opportunity to compete in Renault’s first post-war model almost from the moment it went on sale in 1947.

For an economy car, it went very well, but it was hampered by the fact that it ran in the 1100cc class with an engine measuring just 760cc.

Renault responded by downsizing the engine to 747cc, and at the same time making it more powerful.

This put the car in the 750cc class, with predictable results. In the 1951 Rallye Monte-Carlo, 4CVs occupied all of the top five places in this category – and 14 in the top 20.

25. Renault 8

More powerful than either the 4CV or the Dauphine which followed it, the 8 quickly became a favourite of young drivers in France, and further afield, in the 1960s.

The fastest 8 was the Gordini, which did extraordinarily well in rallying, notably winning the Tour de Corse (Tour of Corsica) outright every year from 1964 to 1966.

The intensely competitive Renault 8 Gordini Cup is believed to have been the first manufacturer-backed one-make race series in the world. It began in 1966 and was replaced in the 1970s by similar championships for Gordini versions of the more modern 12 and 17.

26. Saab 96

The 96 wasn’t the first Saab to perform at a high level in rallying, but it was the most successful.

Erik Carlsson used this odd-looking but aerodynamic saloon to win the RAC Rally in 1960, 1961 and 1962, and the Rallye Monte-Carlo in 1962 and 1963. Powered by an 841cc three-cylinder two-stroke, it was the smallest-engine to power a winning car in the latter event and the second smallest (after an Austin Seven) in the former.

In 1967, Saab switched to the V4 four-stroke engine used in the Ford Taunus. The 96 remained competitive after this – one was driven to victory in the 1971 RAC Rally in the hands of Stig Blomqvist.

In the same event the following year, Roger Clark scored a famous victory in his Ford Escort RS 1600. While most of the opposition was more than 10 mins off the pace at the end of the four-day event, Blomqvist finished just 3 mins 25 secs behind in the older and much less powerful Saab.

27. Simca 8

Although it later passed into other hands, Simca was founded by Fiat, and the Simca 8 was simply a Fiat 508 C with different badges.

It was built in France, though, so its run of success in the Rallye Monte-Carlo must have been a source of considerable local pride.

In 1949, an 8 lost out to a newer, though smaller-engined, Renault 4CV in the 1100cc class, but a year later, and 13 years after the by now apparently old-fashioned car had gone into production, it finished first, second, third, sixth and seventh.

As mentioned previously, Renault prudently dropped down to the 750cc class in 1951, but the Simcas could cope with anything the rival Fords, Saabs and even Fiats could throw at them, and locked out the podium positions once again.

28. Škoda 130 RS

Operating with very limited resources during the then Czechoslovakia’s Communist period, Škoda was regarded as a joke brand in some western European countries, but there was no doubt that its competitions department did a fine job with what it had.

The 130 RS was the most celebrated of several competition cars based on the humble 100 Series (110 R pictured). Its rear-mounted engine was enlarged to take full advantage of the 1300cc class limit, and produced a remarkable 142bhp at 8500rpm.

It made its debut in 1975 and was soon achieving tremendous results in rallies, including a class win on the 1977 Rallye Monte-Carlo and ninth overall on the 1978 Acropolis.

There was success in circuit racing, too. Naturally, the 130 RS couldn’t keep up with larger-engined cars, but it was the dominant 1.3-litre entrant in the 1981 European Touring Car Championship, allowing Škoda to win the manufacturers’ title ahead of BMW, Ford and Audi.

29. Škoda Felicia

As Volkswagen gradually took over Škoda during the 1990s, the Czech brand’s cars became noticeably more modern.

The Felicia was a decent, if unremarkable, front-wheel-drive hatchback in standard form, but proved to be very effective in rally spec, particularly when Škoda fitted it with a highly developed 1.6-litre VW engine.

Its finest moment came in the 1996 RAC Rally, when Stig Blomqvist not only won his class by over half an hour, but also finished third overall.

The RAC wasn’t a round of the World Rally Championship that year, but the Felicia had beaten all the Fords, Nissans, Renaults and Seats, despite having a smaller engine than any of them.

30. Volvo 850 Estate

No article of this type would be complete without a mention of the Volvo 850 Estates developed by Tom Walkinshaw Racing for the 1994 British Touring Car Championship.

Reasons given for this odd choice include publicity potential and something about aerodynamics, which is not normally a positive feature of estate cars.

The Volvos certainly attracted attention, but they weren’t especially successful. Lead driver Rickard Rydell finished nine races in the top 10 and another nine out of it.

In 1995, Volvo switched to the saloon version of the 850, which did much better. Rydell won four races and made it to the podium 11 times, which earned him third place in the drivers’ championship.