Group B

Group B was a set of regulations for grand touring (GT) cars used in sports car racing and rallying introduced in 1982 by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). Although permitted to enter a GT class of the World Sportscar Championship alongside the faster and more popular Group C prototypes, Group B cars are commonly associated with the international rallying scene during 1982 to 1986, when they were the highest class used in the World Rally Championship (WRC) and regional and national rally championships.

The Group B regulations fostered some of the fastest, most powerful, and most sophisticated rally cars ever built, and their era is commonly referred to as the golden era of rallying.^[1] However, a series of major accidents, some fatal, were believed to be caused by their outright speed, with lack of crowd control at events.^[2] After the death of Henri Toivonen and his co-driver Sergio Cresto in the 1986 Tour de Corse, the FIA banned the group from competing in the WRC from the following season, dropped its prior plans to introduce Group S, and designated Group A as the top class of rally cars with engine limits of 2000 cc and 300 bhp.^[3]

In the following years, ex-rally Group B cars found a niche in the European Rallycross Championship until being dropped in 1993. By 1991, the World Sportscar Championship had moved on from Group B and C, with the GT championships formed in the 1990s preferring other classes such as the new GT1. The last Group B cars were homologated in 1993, though the FIA made provisions for national championships and domestic racing until as late as 2011.^[4][5]