Rally2 (ex-R5) News

I see where the article is coming from, particularly when you consider the Holzer situation, which it doesn't talk about, but I don't really like the tone. I appreciate it's the British/BRC centric Motorsport News, but I don't think you can or should judge the R5 category by the failures of the British Rally Championship or rallying in general in the UK. I certainly don't think we in the UK should dictate to the FIA what it should do with the R5s. Through mismanagement, bad fortune and changing circumstaces, the UK is not the rallying powerhouse it once was, we're in no position to call the shots...

I was thinking about the Holzer Corsa too.. what a shame it'll be if all that work goes to waste due to Opel not homologating it.

The MN article makes total sense. R5 (and R2) are well conceived categories, but having them developed exclusively by manus tuners make it too expensive. Letting private tuners get a piece of the pie would allow customers to have a larger and cheaper choice (even if less competitive) and eventually would force current builders to bring their prices down. If RGT and future R4 models can be homologated without the manus involvement, why can’t the same be allowed in R5?

Has that ever worked? No, it hasn't.

I mean there were tons of cheap Puntos, Protons, Polos, MGs S2000 around but nobody was buying them. It's sport and sport is about being competitive. Buying slow car is the same like to throw the money out of the window. Look, around 300 customers bought Fabias R5/S2000 despite them being the most expensive cars around. How many private Protons do You remember? One or two? In 2012 several drivers were offered a drive on Barum with Punto for the price of common gr.N car but nobody was interested because the car was already too slow against Fabias, Peugeots or Fiestas and it didn't help that those competitive cars cost 3-4x more.

If You can spend 250 thousand for competitive car or 200 thousand for virtually useless car which one You choose?

Besides that this model didn't work even when there was virtually no competition from true manufacturers - with R-GTs.

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Originally Posted by Mirek

Has that ever worked? No, it hasn't.
I mean there were tons of cheap Puntos, Protons, Polos, MGs S2000 around but nobody was buying them. It's sport and sport is about being competitive. Buying slow car is the same like to throw the money out of the window. Look, around 300 customers bought Fabias R5/S2000 despite them being the most expensive cars around. How many private Protons do You remember? One or two? In 2012 several drivers were offered a drive on Barum with Punto for the price of common gr.N car but nobody was interested because the car was already too slow against Fabias, Peugeots or Fiestas and it didn't help that those competitive cars cost 3-4x more.
If You can spend 250 thousand for competitive car or 200 thousand for virtually useless car which one You choose?

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It worked fine in Gr. A days. There was room for low budget A8 cars like there’s room for low budget R5’s now. Take the Mirage R5 case: the announced price is €180K; that's less 80K than an i20 or a Fabia, which is a lot of money for privateers. The car is far from being ridiculous on gravel (there's no tarmac version simply because homologation didn't happened), so it's not hard to believe that it could be a reasonable alternative for the many Evo’s owners around the world.

R Group was FIA’s definitive switch towards manus tuners. Even if today's rally cars are fantastic machines, their huge cost and the limited number of models available can hardly be seen as the only option to develop the sport. Bringing private tuners back, in a free market spirit (not as in the new R4) with a homologation friendly policy (the opposite of what happened in RGT), can only be positive.

Btw, the Puntos were developed by Fiat and their 0km price was on the same level of a 207. The Proton's and MG were limited scale projects and just a few S2000 Polos were brought to Europe by a Belgium team, but they were built by VW South Africa.

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Originally Posted by Rally Power

It worked fine in Gr. A days. There was room for low budget A8 cars like there’s room for low budget R5’s now. Take the Mirage R5 case: the announced price is €180K; that's less 80K than an i20 or a Fabia, which is a lot of money for privateers. The car is far from being ridiculous on gravel (there's no tarmac version simply because homologation didn't happened), so it's not hard to believe that it could be a reasonable alternative for the many Evo’s owners around the world.

R Group was FIA’s definitive switch towards manus tuners. Even if today's rally cars are fantastic machines, their huge cost and the limited number of models available can hardly be seen as the only option to develop the sport. Bringing private tuners back, in a free market spirit (not as in the new R4) with a homologation friendly policy (the opposite of what happened in RGT), can only be positive.

Btw, the Puntos were developed by Fiat and their 0km price was on the same level of a 207. The Proton's and MG were limited scale projects and just a few S2000 Polos were brought to Europe by a Belgium team, but they were built by VW South Africa.

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The Mirage R5 is listed as 180k, because that's the maximum price for an R5 allowed under the regulations.

Same as the other cars....

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Originally Posted by Rally Power

It worked fine in Gr. A days. There was room for low budget A8 cars like there’s room for low budget R5’s now. Take the Mirage R5 case: the announced price is €180K; that's less 80K than an i20 or a Fabia, which is a lot of money for privateers. The car is far from being ridiculous on gravel (there's no tarmac version simply because homologation didn't happened), so it's not hard to believe that it could be a reasonable alternative for the many Evo’s owners around the world.

R Group was FIA’s definitive switch towards manus tuners. Even if today's rally cars are fantastic machines, their huge cost and the limited number of models available can hardly be seen as the only option to develop the sport. Bringing private tuners back, in a free market spirit (not as in the new R4) with a homologation friendly policy (the opposite of what happened in RGT), can only be positive.

Btw, the Puntos were developed by Fiat and their 0km price was on the same level of a 207. The Proton's and MG were limited scale projects and just a few S2000 Polos were brought to Europe by a Belgium team, but they were built by VW South Africa.

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The Mirage is hardly any success. The car isn't competitive against the top dogs, there is only few of them around and it will stay like that. Just like it was with all private S2000 cars. Proton Satria S2000 was much more competitive car and it still never broke to the market despite being cheaper and only slightly slower than the top cars.

In my example with Puntos I didn't speak about new cars. In 2011-2012 a used Punto cost 1/3 of what a new Fabia or Fiesta yet nobody was buying or even using them. Everybody sane was buying the expensive but competitive cars. That used Punto wasn't worse than contemporary private cars which were moreover 2x more expensive because they were new. Logically if there was a market for cheap but somewhat slower cars the stages would be filled with used Puntos but they were not. Look at it also from sponsor's point of view. Why shall You give money to a project which is non-competitive from the very beginning no matter who sits behind the wheel? That's pure waste of money. And I don't even start to compare customer services which private teams can offer.

Argument with gr.A would be good if it wasn't quarter century later than that time. Again please look at R-GT. Even without any competition from works team the formula ended with total disaster because teams neither need nor want cars which aren't good for anything else than having fun.

Isnt there any trickle-down effect, with older used R5's getting into the hands of less wealthy privateers by now ?

The earliest R5's will be 5 years old next year - how much do they go for ?

In the long-term something has to replace the ageing Evos and Subarus...

Mirage is not R5 car, it's R5-wannabe, and still price is high and level is lower than R5... I know that car quite well...
I fully agree with Mirek, it's simply like that... if someone can spend 200k he will also be able to spend 250k for much better car. And running cost is quite smilar if you compare fast and slow R5 cars...
S2000 Polos were build in Belgium, not imported from SA.

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Originally Posted by Mirek

The Mirage is hardly any success. The car isn't competitive against the top dogs, there is only few of them around and it will stay like that.

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How can the Mirage became a success without being homologated? The car showed some speed on gravel but MPart would need to sell more units to have means for a bigger development, and the only way to sell more units is by having Mitsubishi approval to homologate it.

For sure you’ll always need a top manu car to become champ, but there’s room for lower budget cars in any class. Even now the FIA is thinking on having R2 light, as R2 aren’t affordable for beginners. The same could happen in R5, once there are plenty of private drivers desiring to get more affordable 4wd rally cars (R4 will hardly be the solution with a single kit supplier).

Btw, it was told here many times: RGT didn’t work because the homologation process was too demanding and expensive for privateers.

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Originally Posted by rallyfiend

The Mirage R5 is listed as 180k, because that's the maximum price for an R5 allowed under the regulations. Same as the other cars....

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Actually, the Mirage looked to be the only one respecting the FIA ‘limit’. Btw, once you don’t believe in that price, can you tell us how much a new Mirage R5 costs?