The news link this week is tenuous. And by tenuous I mean pretty much non-existent. But let’s stick with it.
As we know, Alister McRae is back in action this week. He’s driving Petter Solberg’s Ford Escort Mk2 in the legends section of Royal Rally of Scandinavia. The Royal Rally is based in Karlstad – a place normally associated with snow and Sweden. Hence Big Al in the Legacy in the snow…
Enough explaining! This was the 1993 RAC Rally, a proper snowy one where the eventual winner Juha Kankkunen admitted going off the road was a matter of when not if (Cropton for him, almost rolled, but kept going).
Big Al kept it on the road to finish 10th overall – a significant achievement for a driver still in his first season in a proper Group A car.
And here’s the thinking behind the picture, the Subaru Legacy RS was a proper Group A car. It sounded furious and came with a clandestine brutality that dropped jaws the world over. Here was a car that looked, let’s be honest, fairly dull. But then it could do all that these things. It was an absolute banger.
And that year’s RAC was an absolute ripper, one well worth skipping school for.
Up front, Alister’s brother Colin had led early on before a branch pierced the radiator and cooked his Subaru Impreza 555’s engine while their older and apparently more experienced father Jimmy had already put a Group A Volkswagen Golf off the road in Clocaenog.
If you’re fortunate enough to be in or around Karlstad this week, don’t be sad at the lack of snow, be happy at the opportunity to talk Group A Legacies with Alister McRae.
And, don’t forget, if you’re really taken with the car – as I am – you could always buy the car Colin used to win the second of two British titles in 1992.
