Group B's lasting impression on the WRC

Eras. They're best not compared really. Tyson or Ali? Shankly's Liverpool versus Fergie's Manchester United?

It's impossible. Nobody can definitely say who was better, who would have won.

What about lining Carl Lewis up against Usain Bolt? That's a different matter. Definitely, we can say the Jamaican is quicker. He has covered 100m in 9.58 seconds and 200m in 19.19s. Lewis posted 9.83s and 19.75s.

Does that make Bolt a stronger, better, faster athlete than Lewis? What would happen if Lewis ran with today's technology, today's improved track surface, training techniques?

By the same reckoning, nobody can say Sebastien Loeb is a faster driver than Walter Rohrl. Or Sebastien Ogier would have had the edge over Markku Alen.

What we can say, without a shadow of a doubt, is that Loeb's Citroen Xsara WRC was quicker than Rohrl's Audi Quattro S1 E2. And Ogier's Polo has the legs over Alen's Delta S4.

No doubt.

But still, Group B is feted as rallying's fastest era. It wasn't.

It was, however, the sport's most dramatic period. Elements of what we saw through the mid-1980s can never happen again and the FIA is working harder than ever to make the sport a safer place to compete and to watch.

However, what the WRC does need is presence.

Group B cars had presence. And that's been the driver in the change in technical regulations. Next year's World Rally Cars must deliver the kind of stationary visual drama which Peugeot's 205 T16 and Austin Rover's MG Metro 6R4 had in spades.

The lineage for the 2017 cars can certainly be traced back to Group B. Largely because that line has been drawn by FIA president Jean Todt. Thirty years ago, Todt was in charge of Peugeot's all-conquering Group B programme. Under his command, the French manufacturer dominated the drivers' and makes' races in 1985 and 1986. More than that, Todt saw first hand the effect his cars had on people.

"It made them dream," the president told Autosport. "Now, with today's cars, people don't dream about these cars. We have to make them dream again."

Todt's ambition to see bedroom walls decorated with 2017 machinery has not only brought about the biggest change in regulations since World Rally Cars arrived in 1997, it has the look entirely fitting with the legacy of the spectacle that was Group B.

What made Group B so special was its enigmatic quality. How could people drive those cars so quickly? How could people take those risks?

Ask Rohrl how many drivers he thought possessed the ability to take those things to the absolute limit and his answer is surprising.

"I don't want to think about names," he says, "but finally it was only three people who were able to go fast in a Group B car.

"In 1987 Monte Carlo [with the Group A car] we had 230 [bhp]. Before I was with 530 in 1986. On that event, I was thinking three people were on the same level. But the year later, I was thinking it was 15 people because it was too easy.

"It was flat out all the time and this is the reason I stopped rally driving. It was not a challenge anymore for me - having 230hp, 1480kg and 90% of the time just flat out because there is no power."

Rohrl admits Group B's downfall accelerated his departure from the WRC. He adds: "I was not sure I wanted to leave this fantastic sport, but Group A makes my decision so much easier."

If Rohrl had stayed around a little longer, he'd have found Group A cars beating stage records just four years on from the end of the departure of the fire-spitting monsters. Nothing stands still in this sport. Time and technology wait for no man. Regardless of the tech regs.

One current driver who is better equipped than anybody to offer an appraisal of the Group B era in comparison to what's happening here and now is Jari-Matti Latvala.

The Finn's fanatical about rallying and is a particular fan of Audi's Quattro. He owns two, a Group 4 and an early Group B car.

"The bonnet is the first thing you notice when you get into the Audi," says Latvala. "For around 10 years, I haven't seen the bonnet in a car I have been competing in - you sit so, so much lower in a World Rally Car than you ever did in this thing. It's almost like I'm sitting on top of the car in Audi.

"And you have to play with the throttle off the line. We have the car weighing around 1100 kilos with 550bhp, you have to remember this and be progressive off the line.

"You had to be quite aggressive with the car. Even on the asphalt, if you wanted it to turn in, you have to force it. And you keep the turbo spinning all the time. To be honest, the lag is not so bad on this car - on my cars it's terrible! But for this car, they give more fuel to the turbo on overrun, that's why we used to see all the time the big flames coming from the car."

Suspension and brakes are the biggest areas of development in the last three decades and it's in the corners that today shades yesterday.

"On the straights, a Group B car would be faster," Latvala says. "All of that power counts. But the trouble is, in places like Finland you have the corners and you have the jumps.

"That's where my [Volkswagen] Polo would take all the time away from this car. In the Polo we fly as long and as fast as you want. Look at the jump, the big jump in Ouninpohja, all of the time the take-off speed has been getting higher and higher and higher and we jump further and further.

"In Audi, this wouldn't be possible. The suspension simply couldn't take this - you would be out of the road and in the trees for sure. The dampers are old technology with no chance for the rebound."

Maybe this comparison was unfair. Actually, this comparison was unfair.

This laptop I'm tapping at right now, we wouldn't compare that to a 1985 Gavilan SC portable computer which sported a 3.5-inch disc drive, offered 64kb of memory and weighed four kilogrammes.

Group B was always and will always be an enormously special four years in rallying's history. And cars like Audi's Quattro S1 E2 will be cherished in a way I doubt Volkswagen's Polo R WRC and its multitude of titles and rally wins will.

The Volkswagen would smash the Audi, taking second after second per mile off it. I'm not going to tell you how much, it would feel disloyal to a car I adore.

Part of the Group B appreciation comes from what followed in 1987. Group A, by comparison was hideously slow.

Rohrl's co-driver Christian Geistdorfer puts it more succinctly than anybody.

"When we tested the Group A car," says the German, "it was like stepping off a rocket and onto a bicycle."

Markku Alen has similar memories.

"On straights a Group B car is crazy," he says. "So fast. I remember when we tested the Group A Delta at end of '86. 'Hey, what is this? The car is nothing'.

"Group A was not Group B. Before we were starting flat-out into the night, all night, all day. Then we coming to service at side of the road, car destroyed, boys fixing it and we were flat out again. Today, what is happening, all the time sitting in service staring at split times and eating your fingers.

"But, I hope with 2017, it's looking good again. Group B is coming back."

With bigger wings, wider arches, longer splitters, sexier sills and grunt to go with it, there's a visceral link to what's gone before.

Beneath the skin, however, these are different beasts. Transmission, suspension and tyres have moved on so far, next year's World Rally Cars are from a different planet. For starters, they'll go around corners.

Any understeering similarities are coincidental: drivers today have the car set-up that way - it's proven to be the quickest way. Three decades ago, front-end push came in the doldrums that were also known as turbo lag. Understeer was always followed by one of two things: almost uncontrollable oversteer or the ditch. Both accompanied by the cheerful whistle of an almighty big blower.

On a far more serious note, safety is something which has evolved further than ever in and out of the car. The crews at the front of world rallies work in a far, far safer environment than ever before, while those of us watching from the side of the road do so without playing Russian roulette with every other competitor.

And the view from the side of the road will be better - and faster - than ever before. Finally, rallying's light could be emerging from beneath the Group B bushel.