RAC Rally - 1978 

Especially RS 2000

@@melgrant7404 you're goddamn right

The Opel Ascona400/Manta400. Same concept: Light RWD car, 16V 4cyl engine. Later the BMW e30 M3 was a lot like it. Great tarmac rally cars.

Stratos V6 surely.

Whilst that was true of the lower class cars the Group 4 cars were very heavily modified for strength, performance and safety. I believe that the cost of a Group 4 Escort was around £250,000 in that period.

Before the 90's onward Rac rally actually doesnt used any pacenote at all, instead they used a map and road book to warn the driver of the dangers during the stage. For other rally event though some event doesn't actually allow you to do recce and instead used the pace note that we're already created by the organizer. But for the making of pace note, yes they would actually show up weeks before the event, to make pace note the driver will drive a test car (usually group n car) and tells the co driver about the dangers, corner, jump, etc while driving. For more complete information though i suggest you to search juha kankkunen's 1996 rally indonesia recce there it shows how pace note were made.

I used to work for UMP (the company that made this film) as a sound recordist. At the time the precise route of all the Special Stages was kept secret (and as the routes varied each year notes made from previous years would usually be very incomplete at best) before the event and they were never run on public roads in the UK, although public roads - closed for the event - were used on the Circuit of Ireland and the Manx. Roadbooks only gave the routes between stages. Our director, Barrie Hinchliffe, was given privileged information on the exact stage routes so that he could find the best camera positions and work out out the logistics of leapfrogging two or more film crews between these locations and stopping at some of the service halts etc. He was lent a Forestry Commission key so that he could recce. such places as Kielder Forest. Two or three days before each event the film crew(s) that was not accompanied by Barrie would be given a set of O.S. maps and had to painstakingly copy a set made by him that showed the entire rally route, including the special stages, with camera positions marked on it. In addition we were given a set of notes detailing exactly how we were to access these camera positions and the precise spot where the camera was to be positioned. To make sure we got it right Barrie would sometimes place one of his cards under a stone at the chosen point. We did very little night shooting as headlights in the dark are not great to watch, but even so our hotel overnight stops were usually very short. The shortest I can remember was under two hours and during these breaks there was equipment to be cleaned, often dried out, and film and sound reports to be filled in and food to be eaten. But no complaints - we had the best views of the rally, met the drivers and their crews, and we were paid for it. Incidentally our transport was swb Ford Transit crew buses fitted with 3 litre Ford Essex engines and they were maintained by David Sutton who also looked prepared a lot of Group 4 Escorts, including the Rothmans sponsored Ford team.