The Rallye de France, also called the Tour de Corse, was first held in 1956 as a rallye around the island of Corsica. It was part of the World Rally Championship from the 1973 to 2008. Originally run all over the island it now resides in the area local to the Islands capital city, Ajaccio. Due to the nature of these torturous, twisty, asphalt mountain roads the rally has the nick name, "Ten Thousand Turns Rally".
The 1985 running of the rallye was marred by the death of Attilio Bettega on stage four. His Lancia 037 struck a tree, drivers side on, and he was killed instantly. The co-driver Maurizio Perissinot was completely uninjured. 1986 saw another death on the tour and the safety of group B rally cars became a big talking point, eventually leading to the cessation of the class.
Darnich and Mahe were privateer entrees in many rallies around Europe, seldom racing a complete season preferring to run in selected races. They took part in the 1985 Tour de Corse but retired with electrical problems.
The works Peugeot team claimed second in the rallye, their driver Bruno Saby debuting the new Peugeot 205 T16 E2. The tour was won by Jean Ragnotti and co-driver Pierre Thimonier in a Renault 5 Maxi Turbo. The 205 styling is often thought to be by Pininfarina but in fact it was an in house design, Pininfarina only styled the cabriolet version.
The 205 is often credited with saving Peugeot's fortunes, before the 205 Peugeot was a conservative company preferring to build large saloons like the 504 and 505. The idea of the 205 came with Peugeot's 1978 buy out of Simca who had necessary experience in producing small cars. This gave Peugeot an option into the new hatchback market.
It wasn’t long before a GTI version came in, 1.6-litre and 1.9-litre, in-line four cylinder engines gave an excess of power. And Peugeot spent time and money making sure the chassis could handle the power, making the 205 GTi one of the very best hot hatches of all time. Many motoring experts said The 205 GTI was the first front wheel drive car to be as rewarding to drive hard as any equivalent rear-wheel drive car.
To homologate any Group B rally car, the manufacturer must produce 200 road-going examples, and Peugeot duly built their road going 205 T16’s. These cars have little in common with the actual rally versions beyond the basic body shape. They did have the transverse mid-engine, four-wheel drive layout of the rally car, but with less than half the power. All 200 built were left-hand drive.
Peugeot Talbot Sport's factory 205 T16s under Jean Todt were the most successful cars to compete in the last two years of the World Rally Championship's Group B era, winning the 1985 and 1986 Constructors' and Drivers' titles.
1/24th scale kit.
Detailed by Ian.
This model is the subject of an article written to exemplify detailing methods. As mentioned in the article this model was previously built when Ian got it, he simply put his own stamp on it by detailing it.
The idea, beyond making it his own, was to show that models can be brought to life without having to cost a fortune in photo-etched sets and specialist detail parts. It isn’t 100% accurate, that would have required and awful lot more work preferably before the body was put together, it is simply meant to be representative of the type of details and techniques that can be developed, and privide pleasure from model making.
The kit appears to be the 1/24th scale Heller version, kit no 80716. It is a fairly basic kit featuring some over sized mounting points and some parts that seemed to “snap together”. The addition of an aftermarket decal sheet (studio 27 set ST27-DC709C) provided a rare colour scheme and gave the model more 'curb appeal'.
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