As vintage circuit competition cars have steadily ascended into the automotive Valhalla of pricing thanks to success of popular races like the Le Mans Classic, Monterey Historics, and of course the many events at Goodwood, the fallout has been to pull up related motorsports. For some time, vintage rally cars were generally considered used up, tired old hulks. But the fringe of enthusiasts that loved seeing the flatout and fearless driving attitude adopted by many a rally driver has grown to a much greater audience with new races like the Targa Newfoundland and Tasmania to name a few. While those races attract much newer and faster metal, there’s still a huge audience that loves seeing the pre-Quattro 1970s vintage rally cars. With high revving naturally aspirated motors and rear drive, this was the original ‘Formula Drift’, with constantly sideways Ford Escorts, Fiat 131 Abarths and the superhero of the 1970s WRC scene, the Lancia Stratos. But mixed in there too were some Porsche 911s, and of course, the effervescent BMW 2002:
Tag: 02
As with E30s, E36s, Volkswagen GTis and Jettas and Audi A4s, there seem to be a tremendous amount of modified 2002s. A popular tuning platform, they take many different forms in their personalization – not all of them good. Indeed, some of the modded 2002s that pop up for sale really leave me scratching my head as to the intentions of the owner. But when you see one that got it right, they always make me smile. Some of those “right” cars are period-look Alpina or Schnitzer cars, some are more subtle – just low, clean and with a nice set of Hella or Marchal fogs and some BBS Mahles. Then there are the updated cars, such as this more wildly Zender flared example. To me it looks pretty slick!