How a legendary tin-top sparked a WRC legacy

Prodrive in rallying means one thing: Subaru. Or so you might think. Thirty years ago today, Prodrive won its first-ever round of the World Rally Championship.

And Subaru? Well they were around, but they were still being driven across muddy fields with Dolly's predecessors being loaded into the back of the rather amusingly named BRAT (the Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter).

The WRC was still a very long way off for Subaru, with the sort of domination the diminutive Japanese marque would be displaying inside a decade still a pipedream.

But, because of what happened 30 years ago, the Banbury-built, flat-four boxer-powered Subarus became a household name and helped make heroes like Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Petter Solberg.

It was a Frenchman, four letters and one number that helped put Prodrive on the map: Bernard Beguin and, of course, BMW M3.

The 1987 Tour de Corse concluded on May 9 with a success that helped lay the foundations for what would follow when Prodrive moved from Silverstone to the first of its two Banbury bases.

"I honestly think that," says Prodrive technical director David Lapworth, pictured above during Prodrive's Subaru years. "That's how important that first win was to us, it really did lay the foundations for this company to be built on. It's right that people remember Prodrive in rallying for Subaru, but without that win for Bernard..."

Carry on David. In practical terms, what did that win mean, 30 years ago?

"I know we had representatives from Subaru coming to visit us during the events we were doing with the BMW," he says. "I think the work we were doing on those events was worth at least as much as any presentations we were giving them. It was so important."

Not least because the service Prodrive was offering to Subaru was very similar to the mutually-successful deal they'd done with BMW. The original E30 M3 road car was devised in 1985 with the sensible decision to take it from road to track soon after. Prodrive was involved with the race car from the onset, but with a history in rallying, David Richards was keen to demonstrate the M3's potential on stage as well.

Towards the end of 1986, the next chapter of Prodrive's rally history was far from certain. The decision to ban Group B had left a good few MG Metro 6R4s kicking around the firm's base at the Northamptonshire circuit; internationally, they were dead in rallying.

For Richards, the M3 (the 1988 BTCC version of which is pictured below) provided the perfect solution. Munich was convinced and a rally version was homologated in early 1987, with sights set on the Tour de Corse in May.

"The base was the touring car," says Lapworth. "But BMW prepared us an engine with milder cams and a different exhaust; a car which was generally suited to rallying.

"We reworked the suspension - and that included developing some bespoke gravel suspension a little bit later down the line - and basically 'rally-ised' the car with all the co-driver's kit and everything else it needed. We did this in three months and sent the car off to its first event with Beguin, which was the Rallye des Garrigues at the end of March.

"The car went well, but we had an electrical problem. A water temperature sensor failed, so the engine assumed it was very cold and kept sending more fuel in, which flooded the thing. This was the very early days of working with engine management, we were still learning a lot."

More testing and a couple more rallies - including victory on the Criterium de Touraine - and the M3 was looking good. But, with Group A's stay as world rallying's main category still less than five months old, nobody really knew what to expect from Lancia, Ford, Renault and Volkswagen. There had been four different winners in the first four rallies. Round five was tough to call.

"That's right," says Lapworth. "When we got to Ajaccio, we genuinely didn't know what to expect; nobody did the first time that bunch of cars came together. I think it would have been fair to say we probably feared the Fords the most. The Lancias looked like they would struggle on dry Tarmac, but as for the others, we didn't know."

As it happened, Prodrive had nothing to fear. Nothing, that was, except the weather. Beguin led from the start, but when the cloud moved in for the northbound stage from Aullene to Zicavo right in the heart of the island, Prodrive feared the worst.

"I can't remember the tyre choice we made," says Lapworth, "but I remember getting the message over the radio to prepare for rain. It might have been that we were on slicks and we needed to take an inter, or we were on inters and we needed the wet.

"Anyway, the message came too late and the car was on its way to the control. We couldn't do anything."

And the further the cars climbed into that 15-miler, the harder and colder that rain became - until it turned to hail, covering the stage in ice.

"That was very hard," recalls Beguin. "It was tough to make it through the stage - we knew we would be losing time."

It wasn't only time he lost - the lead went as well as Yves Loubet made full use of his Lancia Delta HF 4WD. But once the storm passed, Beguin was able to reel his rival in, helped in some small part by a puncture for the Corsican. Once the BMW was back out in front, Beguin and the team didn't look back went on to take the win by two minutes.

"I haven't driven that M3 for a couple of years," says Lapworth. "But every time I do, I'm reminded just what a great car it was. It was like a more sophisticated MkI or MkII Escort.

"For that event at that time, it was just perfect: it was a rally car with DNA from a touring car, it had a high-revving, naturally aspirated, powerful engine with a six-speed dog 'box and rear-wheel drive. It was like a go-kart."

Talking after the podium, Richards was full of optimism about the future for Prodrive.

He said at the time: "This team is ready for the next step and that next step is a world championship programme. We're a small team, but we've shown what we can achieve in terms of engineering and results. This is a very big deal for Prodrive."

On reflection, there couldn't have been a bigger result leading to that bigger deal three decades ago.

"That car really served us well," says Lapworth. "Even on the gravel, it was great - remember when Ari [Vatanen] used one in Finland [1988 1000 Lakes]. He was going really well. From memory he clipped a rock that was on the line and broke something on the front MacPherson strut. I think it was then that we accepted we had to do the full-blown gravel spec on the suspension.

"But on the Tarmac, it was fantastic. We had some incredible battles in the French Championship in the coming years, a lot of the time with the [Ford] Sierra [RS] Cosworths (Stig Blomqvist's example pictured above).

"In Corsica that year (1987), they didn't run that well, but once they got onto a wider piece of road with more flowing corners, they were really quick and a real challenge for us.

"Looking back, we really achieved a lot with that car very quickly - especially when you consider the thousands of kilometres some of the other teams had put in. That was a good result for us."

It was the result that made the difference and helped make Prodrive the multiple world champion force it would go on to become in rallying.

Taking Subaru from the field and onto bedroom walls around the world was a process started with a rasping Bavarian racer firing flames from a side exhaust at the dawn of Group A.