In the wide realm of motor sports, the jack-of-all-trades racer is the rally car. Rally cars compete on every surface, from muddy forest paths to desert highways to closed-off asphalt public roads. Try that in an Indy-style car.
In Europe, rallying attracts huge audiences, but here in the U.S., it gets all the attention of a tractor pull. Top European rally drivers earn about $1 million a season. The best U.S. rally drivers don't even think about getting paid to race-they're lucky if sponsors pay their expenses. Still, rallies involve spectacular driving and wickedly fast cars. To find out just how fast rally cars are, and to have a little fun, we arranged a test of Subaru's World Rally Championship-winning Impreza rally car.

The Impreza competes in the World Rally Championship (WRC), which is the world's premier rally series. The 14-event series is sanctioned by theFédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the organization that rulesFormula 1, and rallies are held on five continents: Europe, Africa, South America, Asia, and Australia. Think of a rally as a three-day run around a huge parcel of countryside sometimes the size of Rhode Island some-times even larger. Racers drive as fast as they can over a series of timed "stages," which include varying terrain or closed public roads or both. During the British Royal Automobile Club (RAC) rally, the longest stage is 37 miles. The shortest stage, on the Australian rally, is a dicey 1.4-mile stretch. Each rally usually has 15 or more stages spread over those three days. A typical rally includes 250 miles of racing and another 300 miles of driving between stages. The driver with the quickest overall time wins.

Pit stops are called "service stops" in rally-speak. Over a day's rallying, crews are allowed just three 20-minute sessions and one 45-minute session to repair and maintain the cars. Working overnight on the cars is not permitted. If the car needs a repair that takes longer than the allowed time, the team is out of luck.

In WRC, there are two participants in the cockpit, a driver and a navigator. Even though the drivers get all the glory, they couldn't win without a skilled navigator. For a week before the rally, the driver and the navigator make two slow passes over each stage of the course recording every turn, straight, and jump. During the rally, the navigator relays the notes back to the driver. The accuracy of these notes can mean victory-or disaster. Although the driver and the navigator drive the course before the rally, they never make a full-speed run until the actual event.

A particularly effective team in 1997 consisted of Subaru Impreza driver Colin McRae and navigator Nicky Grist. Their stats areparadoxical: Although they won the most races (six), failure to finish six other races cost McRae the drivers' championship, which was won by Mitsubishi driver Tommi Mäkinen. McRae and fellow Subaru drivers Piero Liatti and Kenneth Eriksson did, however, score enough points in their Imprezas to give Subaru its third consecutive manufacturers' championship.

In the World Rally Championship, that's no small feat. Mitsubishi, Ford, Toyota, and Subaru spend a lot of money in pursuit of that trophy. The top teams spend somewhere around $20 million a year to campaign two cars. Whereas that sort of money is usually spent on purpose-built racecars, WRC cars are based on production cars. Don't take "based on" too seriously- no production car could survive the punishment a rally dishes out. So follow along while we clarify a bit.A World Rally Championship car must start out as a 2.0-liter car, built in worldwide numbers greater than 25,000. What must remain stock in the rally car are its unibody structure, the basic suspension design, the engine block, the cylinder heads, the engine's position, and the outer body shape. There's still plenty left to optimize and modify, and for this, Subaru hired Pro-drive, a combination race shop and engineering house in Banbury, England, to develop, build, and campaign the Impreza rally car.

The engine was developed by Subaru's motor-sports arm, Subaru Tecnica International. Subaru uses a 2.0-liter flat four-the only "boxer" engine in the series. Subaru believes that its longitudinally mounted flat-four drivetrain gives the Impreza a more even weight distribution and a lower center of gravity than the transversely placed in-line four-cylinder setups used by the competition. Maybe the center of gravity is lower, but the Impreza rally car carries 55 percent of its mandatory minimum 2700 pounds on its front wheels, and most of the other rally cars achieve the same weight distribution.

The rules allow turbocharging, but with a catch, known as a restrictor. The restrictor is a plate 0.2 inch thick and made of aluminum, with a hole at its center 1.4 inches in diameter. It sits between the airbox and turbocharger. As a way to limit horsepower-choking the flow of power-enhancing air into the engine-the plate is very effective. Although the FIA sets the horsepower limit at 300, these cars are not required to be dyno'd to verify power output. By fixing the displacement at 2.0 liters and restricting incoming air, there's precious little the engineers can do to sneak above that 300-horse limit, but that doesn't mean they don't try. Subaru isn't about to divulge the secrets of its rally engine, but it will reveal a few details. Basically, the engineers set out to make a won't-break, tractable engine with little or no turbo lag. The stock crankshaft, pistons, rods, and cams were swapped for lighter, stronger pieces to reduce rotational inertia. The IHI turbocharger pressurizes intake air at a maximum of 36 psi (by way of comparison, the outgoing 911 Turbo S blew 10 pounds of boost) and uses an anti-lag system.

The anti-lag system keeps the turbo spinning even when the driver's foot is off the throttle. By retarding the ignition timing, dumping extra fuel into the cylinders, and keeping the throttle partly open, unburned fuel gets dumped out of the cylinders and into the exhaust manifold. When the fuel hits the hot manifold walls, it burns and expands, and the turbo impeller spins just as in a jet engine. The spinning compressor keeps the boost up so that when the driver gets back on the gas, there's an instantaneous 14 pounds of boost on hand.Two things limit the amount of anti-lag used. The first is a racing catalytic converter, required by the rules. Too much heat and unburned fuel flowing through the cat cause the internal honey-comb to break apart, which can clog the exhaust system. The second is that too much boost from the anti-lag system makes the engine jumpy and difficult to drive smoothly. The electronic engine-management system can easily be programmed to provide the ideal amount of anti-lag.
An oversized radiator helps to dissipate engine heat, and during an extremely hot rally, water is injected into the intake manifold to further cool the engine and to make the intake air cooler and denser. So how much horsepower does the Impreza WRC make? STI president Takemasa Yamada didn't change his facial expression when he replied, "Three hundred." The engine may be powerful, but it hasn't been trouble-free. Three of Colin McRae's six DNFs were caused by engine failure. (The other times, McRae crashed.) A failed timing-belt tensioner caused each of the engine disasters by causing the cam pulley to break, precipitating grave internal harm of the sort that cannot be put right during a 45-minute "ser-vice stop."

The rest of the car is Prodrive's domain. Starting with a bare Impreza body shell, the structural rigidity is enhanced by seam-welding every joint. Then a safety cage is welded in. The finished body is four times more rigid than stock. Preparing the body shell takes about 300 hours.

The suspension comes next. Like the production car, the rally version uses struts all around. The springs, shocks, and control arms are race specification. The suspension pickup points can be moved within a one-inch sphere around the original mounting points and are optimized for off-roading. The uprights are custom steel units, and the hubs are titanium. With the same-as-stock suspension geometry, the Impreza rally car has same-as-stock suspension travel, 7.9 inches front and 8.2 inches rear.

The rules allow replacing the original transmission and drivetrain components. In place of the stock five-speed tranny, Prodrive uses a six-speed box with straight-cut gears known as a "dogbox." A sequential box and even a semiautomatic unit with steering-wheel paddles were tried, but the drivers preferred the conventional H-pattern of the dogbox because they could more easily determine which gear is engaged. Go figure.

Power is supplied to all four wheels by three differentials. The front and center diffs are electronically controlled, and the rear diff is a mechanical limited-slip unit.The front and center units use hydraulic pressure that actuates a clutch pack to vary the amount of lock. The driver can also adjust the amount of lock in these diffs using a knob on the dash. Inside, only the dash covering is stock. Among the myriad of switches and but-tons is a TV screen mounted directly in front of the driver. The screen is part of the on-board data logger and can display anything from engine rpm to suspension positions. The rest of the interior is bare except for the seats and the carbon-fiber panels covering the doors and floor. On the passenger's-side floor, there's a stout aluminum box for the navigator to brace against-but we found no motion-sickness bag.

For stopping power, four-piston calipers grab huge vented discs-14.4-by-1.3 inches in front and 12.0-by-1.0 inches in the rear. In extreme situations where there's lots of grip, like the all-asphalt Corsica rally, the four-pot calipers get swapped for six-piston, liquid-cooled units. McRae prefers manual brakes with no ABS. He says he gets better feedback through the pedal. As you can imagine, he gets what he wants.

Tires and wheels also vary depending on the event. On asphalt, where the object is to get the largest contact patch possible, Prodrive uses 8.0-by-18-inch wheels with Pirelli slicks. On gravel, the 18-inchers are swapped for seven-inch-wide 16s with treaded tires. For snow, the wheels get even smaller studded tires(5.5 by 15) to slice through the soft stuff and get down to the hard pack where the traction is. Pirelli supplies all the tires for the Impreza, and Prodrive is free to use any size, compound, or tread as long as the tread width does not exceed nine inches. As in all motorsports, tire choice can make the difference between a win and a loss. McRae will burn through as many as 48 tires in a single rally.
For our test, we hooked up with the Subaru team in England two days before the final race of the 1997 season, held at Cheltenham, England. McRae still had a chance at the drivers' championship, but only if he won the race and if Mäkinen finished lower than seventh. As it turned out, McRae won the race, but Mäkinen took sixth, and with it, the drivers' championship.

Prodrive let us drive one of its used rally cars. After two races, McRae gets a new car and Prodrive sells the old one. Over a year's time, Prodrive builds 14 new cars. The old cars are sold for $340,000 each, regardless of the car's history. While we're on the subject of money, should you need an engine for your used rally car, pre-pare to cough up $50,000. If you smack a wall and trash the right-front suspension and brakes, you'll be $10,000 poorer. Just one of the six gas-discharge headlights costs $1500, and a new tranny costs $17,000. Economy-minded racers need not apply here.
As is typical of English weather in November, it rained steadily during our entire test. We hooked up our gear anyway, thinking the Subaru's four-wheel drive would still provide traction on the wet track.

On the wet half-mile asphalt straightaway, Prodrive's technical director, David Lapworth, gingerly released the clutch to avoid wheelspin. The Impreza can spin all four wheels effortlessly in the rain. For wheels and tires, we used the tall 18- inchers fitted with rain tires. Sixty miles per hour blew by in only 4.1 seconds. The Impreza hit 100 mph in 11.4 seconds and finished the quarter-mile in 12.8 seconds at 104 mph. In the rain! Porsche 911 Turbo Ss, on a dry track, pass through 60 mph in 3.7 seconds. Our test car's gearing was set up for the tight RAC rally, and thus equipped, the top speed was redline-limited to 127 mph. On the way through the quarter-mile, Lapworth shifted four times, twice as many shifts as required by the Porsche.
The little Subaru displayed amazingly good grip by circling the wet skidpad at 0.85 g. The 911 Turbo S, on street tires in the dry, generates 0.94 g. The unassisted, non-ABS brakes brought the Impreza to a halt from 70 mph in 166 feet, which is 15 feet longer than the Porsche can do in the dry.

Just for kicks, we switched the rain tires for 17-inch gravel donuts and went to a short dirt road. Even on the slippery, muddy road, the Subaru vaulted to 60mph in just 4.6 seconds. This sort of performance begs the question: What's better than a fast car that's fast on every surface? It was soon my turn to take the wheel. Driving someone else's racer is never a completely comfortable experience, but, hey, they have more where this one came from, right? Once strapped in, I was surprised by how comfortable the seating position was. "Drivers spend all day in the car," said Lapworth. "They have to be comfortable." The engine responded instantly to a punch of the starter button and settled into a menacing growl. Prods of the accelerator produced instant response from the engine. Easing the shifter carefully into first gear resulted in a loud clunk. Cautiously, I pulled out without stalling. Hooray! Few race motors appreciate chugging around the pits, and the little four bucked in defiance at any rpm below 3000. After a few recon laps, I got on the gas. To my surprise, there wasn't the huge bang of power I had expected from an engine running 36 pounds of boost. Above 3000 rpm, there was just a smooth rush of acceleration with a small hit at 4500 rpm. The anti-lag system had not been dialed in. "We don't want you getting over your head," chided Lapworth. Even without it, the engine was amazingly responsive. The low growl at idle makes way for a high- pitched squealing noise, which was far from offensive.From inside, the clatter of the gearbox was almost louder. Within a few laps, I could easily throw the car around. The center diff was set to allow just enough rear wheelspin to power-slide the tail. At the first appearance of this wheelspin, I yanked my foot off the gas. Lapworth, riding shotgun, instructed otherwise: "Stay on the gas, and as the center diff locks up, the front wheels will pull you through." Through a long left-hand sweeper in fourth gear, I stood on it. Again, the rear end broke loose, but this time I kept my foot on the gas. If he wasn't worried about ending up in the weeds, neither was I. In about the span of an eye blink, the fronts started spinning, and with a bit of countersteering, the car slid gracefully sideways through the rest of the turn. Yee-ha! I've never driven a car so fast that didn't eventually bite back. Granted, the wet track kept speeds down, but the Subaru nonetheless responded properly to my demands. Although the Impreza would happily slide tail-out through the turns, it did so only when asked and was rock-solid stable on the straights. The only distraction was the stiff brake pedal, which felt like a Nautilus machine. McRae must have legs of steel. The tranny literally banged gear changes with ease, and the power steering was dead nuts accurate. The Impreza withstands more abuse in three days of rallying than most cars see over a lifetime. You can feel its durability, its toughness. It actually feels as though it enjoys the abuse, going faster as you push harder, begging for more. Considering that the drivers run over unfamiliar and unforgiving terrain, the car's benign behavior is no surprise. "We constantly test and develop the car to make the driver feel confident," says Lapworth, "so he'll go faster." The day ended before I had a chance to go crazy. I couldn't help fantasizing about roaring through a forest in a satisfying four-wheel drift. I love the idea of a superquick car that can take loads of abuse and is at home on any surface. Subaru already builds a car of this nature called the Impreza WRX Type R STi. That car is not sold in the U.S., and we've already whined about it ("10Best Forbidden Fruit," January 1998). If Subaru ever changes its mind, however, we'll be first in line.

The Mobile Spectator: I was in England, in the middle of what had once been a forest and now was a great expanse of stumps, standing on a tree trunk made slimy by incessant rain. The skies were gray, and that incessant downfall had turned the once firm ground into shifting muck. A 12-foot-wide mud road snaked through the tree stumps, following the contours of the hilly terrain. Ten minutes earlier as I walked on the road looking for the perfect viewing spot, I had slipped and fallen down-twice. Unfortunately, I was not alone, and the crowds of people lining the road laughed. Two feet off the road I found the bare stump, took up my perch, and waited. And then, in the distance, I could hear faint screeches, pops, and crackles. From my vantage, I could see about 800 feet of the road in each direction. The sounds grew louder, and spectators began to scurry away from the road like nervous rabbits. Someone blew a whistle. The blue Subaru burst into view, fishtailing around a curve, throwing mud, and screeching. Everyone cheered. In two eye blinks the car disappeared down the road. I guessed a speed of about 70 mph. A few daring souls crossed the road, and then the whistle blew again. Another car appeared and shot by. I was so close I was sure I could have reached out and touched it, which to me seemed stupid, so I left my perch for safer ground. More cars whooshed by, seemingly unfazed by the gooey road and unaware of the fallen logs and stumps waiting on either side. I could see the drivers sawing at the steering wheels, their eyes intently locked on the road ahead. Viewing a rally requires running your own sort of mini-rally. Since the cars never run over the same road twice, you watch in one spot and then dash off to another spot. The number of times you see the cars depends solely on your planning ability. Since the rally cars travel much faster than you, it's unlikely you'll be able to catch a glimpse at every stage, so your goal is to plot your own route that will maximize viewing. For many of the spectators, the thrill of following the rally is much like chasing a tornado-except the cars are definitely going to appear. Since the rallies are usually far away from cities, you wind up doing your own tour of the countryside. But in this tour, rally cars are flying by. Could there be any better way to sightsee?

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