One of the oldest sayings in motorsport - and vehicles sales - is “Race on Sunday, sell on Monday.” Another spin on this bon mot is “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.” For many carmakers (and motorcycle makers and snowmobile makers and boat makers and you get the idea) it’s enough to be out in the mix and competing, but to actually be out there and winning is all that much better. And much more difficult.
Rally racing was the most bare-knuckle type of road racing when it was born in the budding car culture of the 1960s and 1970s. Two-member teams - a driver and a co-driver working as navigator - drove civilian cars against each other in timed stages on public roads in clandestine competitions at first, until word spread and the races became more organized - and much more popular.
By the 1980s, rally car competitions had exploded in popularity in Europe, often drawing hundreds of thousands of fans to courses laid out along winding roads through forests, townships and mountain routes. Races were run under any and all conditions, including snow, with drivers piloting stripped-down, lightweight, civilian-style cars built by factory-backed race teams at Audi, Peugeot, Lancia, Ford and others. Motors often made over 300 horsepower - a monumental amount for the time and the size of the cars. The speeds and danger kept increasing, and by the mid-1980s, amid an increasing driver death toll and then some horrific crashes that involved deaths and injuries to race fans lining the courses, rally racing was nearly legislated into extinction.
Fortunately, with much more regulation and strict safety measures for driver and fan safety, rally racing continues today, including in the United States. It remains one of the more accessible motorsports available to civilian drivers and the public at large in the U.S. and world-wide, and Japanese carmaker Subaru looms large with its WRX cars, along with Ford and its RS-series hatchbacks and other compact, high-revving machines.
MORE FROMFORBES ADVISOR
And thankfully, the lessons learned in the dust, dirt, mud, snow and heat of competition have translated to both wins on the American Rally Association (ARA) circuit and some popular, highly entertaining automobiles, like the latest top-spec WRX GT.
I recently drove it to see Subaru Motorsports USA driver’s Brandon sem*nuk take on a widely varied field at the Oregon Trail Rally. At present, Canadian sem*nuk leads the ARA series, along with his Brit co-driver Keaton Williams. They are quickly closing in on an ARA Championship win. They compete in a 2021 WRX STI that gets care from a Subaru team traveling from race to race.
Full disclosure: I own a 2014 Subaru Forester, the de facto Station Wagon of the Pacific Northwest. So many Subarus are sold in Oregon that the running joke is that people are given one when moving to the state. There’s good reason for the (old) joke: Subarus seem intentionally designed for the PNW’s multiple driving challenges, including snow, rain, off-road excursions in dirt, sand, gravel and more, all of which can be encountered in a single day depending on where you’re going.
The cars are also relatively simple in terms of operation: Subaru’s “Symmetrical All Wheel Drive” system doesn’t have an “off” switch. It’s always active, so it’s one less thing to mess with, which suits many Northwest drivers just fine as they journey from sandy beaches to near year-round skiing in the Cascades, just 90 minutes or so from the sand and surf.
After decades of refinement, the Subaru AWD system is solidly in the Just Works category of automotive tech, constantly adjusting traction in ways essentially transparent to drivers. It’s also a winner on the rally racing circuit.
My time with a 2022 WRX GT with the Subaru Performance Transmission (SPT) dovetailed with the ARA rally’s run in the Northwest. Race teams and fans descended upon three locales in Oregon and Washington, including the Portland International Raceway. With a free weekend on tap, I loaded up the ticket-me red turbocharged WRX GT (above) with a cooler full of snax and my newly licensed teenager to take in the races. Although the video below is from 2021, it’s representative of what we experienced:
While I am fairly fluent in Subaru tech and the driving experience, I’m somewhat new to rally racing, although I’ve enjoyed many a rally highlight compilation on YouTube. However, seeing actual rally racing up close on my home turf was both exciting and a revelation as to the approachability of the sport from a fan’s perspective.
While F1 and Indycar races feature largely cloistered celebrity drivers and spectators by the tens of thousands, rally racing - even in Europe, where it is still very popular - draws much smaller crowds and features a broad range of production-based cars piloted by drivers who, like Brandon sem*nuk, are sponsored, but often more than likely are self-funded.
Tickets for an entire weekend of racing are usually under $100 and that includes in-person access to drivers and cars at public pre-race rally events and venues in the small towns, like Goldendale, Washington, where the racing is often based due to the proximity to challenging mountain roads that can be briefly restricted.
It’s in these smaller towns (and even in larger ones such as Portland) that fans can get up close to the cars while they are in the pits and also meet the drivers, who spend time ahead of the races mixing with fans, often on a busy main street (above) or the local racetrack where the race cars are put on display. In Goldendale, population about 3,500, local officials closed the main street through town so the rally cars could be lined up and fans could check them out close up.
It’s an annual event in Goldendale, and the mood was festive and light as drivers posed for photos with fans, signed autographs and enjoyed local cuisine. Some fans even slipped into the driver’s seat of the race cars, although the cars remained stationary.
A small factoid about rally racing I did not notice right away: All of the race cars are street legal, including the manufacturer-sponsored cars like sem*nuk’s howling 330-horsepower race-prepped Subaru WRX. Indeed, drivers have to be able to navigate public roads to make it to the race stage starting areas; there are no transport trucks or other luxuries found in other types of racing. So while the cars may be stripped down to the bare basics and brimming with racing gear, you could also drive them to the store for some groceries if it came down to it. Try that in an F1, Indy or NASCAR entry.
And that’s where rally racing really crosses over to the consumer spectrum in terms of car tech. My Subaru WRX GT SPT may have been plush in comparison to sem*nuk’s (literally) high-flying rally car, with a booming harman/kardon 11-speaker stereo, headlights that peered into corners, multiple drive modes, active suspension and more, but pop it into Sport Plus mode, stomp on the pedal and the 2.4-liter intercooled and turbocharged 271 horsepower pancake four sends the $43,000 machine surging forward, adjustable suspension tightened to its maximum. It’s almost like you could drive it in a rally race...
And while the rally cars are equipped with manual transmissions, my WRX GT came with a 6-speed Special Performance Transmission (SPT) gearbox, which really isn’t a gearbox at all: it’s the latest evolution of Subarus CVT tech. When shopping for our Forester a decade ago, both my wife and I were put off by the sluggish, characterless CVT of the time and got the 6-speed manual stick shift.
But if I didn’t tell you the WRX GT had a CVT and you put it to task using the paddles on the steering column, even an experienced driver would have a hard time discerning the difference between it and a dual-clutch box found on some of the competition. It’s fast, accurate, punchy, and... not weird. It even has “gears” that show in the driver display. And like most “shifting” automatics today, it has built-in safety measures that don’t let drivers over-rev or lug /stall the motor as with a manual box.
On the boil, it’s a true hoot to drive as it spins to redline before either you or it decides to grab the next ratio. Bombing around the back roads and canyons branching from Highway 14 in the Columbia River Gorge, which wind through tiny towns like Klickitat and BZ Corners, the WRX GT feels almost foolproof, with enough power to easily touch triple digits on short straights and big 12.4-inch brakes hauling things back down as corners approach. A mild howl escapes the EPA-quieted dual-piped quad-tipped exhaust, something the aftermarket (and also Subaru) can take care of if you want a bit more of a soundtrack. Meanwhile, the suspension and AWD system, both tweakable on the GT through the big central touchscreen, kept the WRX glued to the road, with torque vectoring tech making the corner exits even more exhilarating.
Inside, the GT slathers on the goodies, including Recaro front seats with microsuede fabric and aggressive bolstering, but they remained comfortable for daily and even long-distance driving as well. A big 11.6-inch vertical touchscreen with Subaru’s STARLINK system (no connection to Elon’s Starlink space birds) lets users tweak performance and suspension parameters and also controls environmental aspects in lieu of physical buttons. Not my favorite approach but it worked fine.
But the real treat was seeing sem*nuk and Williams (above) drift their Subaru WRX through corners, throwing up rooster tails of dust that then wafted into the crowd, or send the car flying off one of the small jumps set up on the course far outside of town, the engine howling at redline as it soared with actual grace before landing over 100 feet down the narrow two-lane dirt track.
Moments later, a competitor - including Lia Block, teenage daughter of past Oregon Trail Rally winner Ken Block, who sadly passed away this year in a snowmobiling mishap - was hot on their tail, her Ford Escort RS wailing as she sought to make up the gap. And behind her, dozens more competitors roared by in BMWs, Mitsubishis and even the occasional Volvo. Most had built up their cars on late nights with friends and family pitching in, just as the original racers had done generations ago.
Rally racing is alive and well in the U.S., with races scheduled across the country. The cars are safer, the fans are protected and the sport retains its close relationship to production vehicles. The rambunctious red Subaru WRX GT I drove home from the races was a clear reminder that Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday is alive and well.
