The well-known expression "Compete on Sunday, sell on Monday" is considered one of the most famous sayings among automotive marketing professionals.
The affinity between the aura of victory of cars in races and the model that carries it there, or looks like it in the showrooms is a component that cannot be underestimated when it comes to motivating a customer to action.
And this trick can work across the length and breadth of the automotive industry.
From the Mini Cooper that wins the Monte Carlo Rally, the Porsche 959 that takes high-tech to the Dakar deserts, and the Lancia Delta Integrale whose rally championship successes have kept sales of the regular Delta going even as it has become obsolete.
They all wanted a piece of the glory, even shards of victory or splashes of champagne to wet the cars in the showroom as well.
In honor of the holiday of Purim, we collected the cars that tried to look like their serial sisters but were more in the direction of serial killers, on the track, in the field and at the head of enthusiastic customers all over the world.
These are not all the cars, there were others, better known, but this is our list, you want - make one for yourself.
The Mini Cooper S has left behind big and privileged names of its own/manufacturer site
Mini Cooper S
For years the Monte Carlo Rally was the crown jewel of rally racing, just like the Formula 1 race around this micro-country.
And when in 1964 a Mini Minor Cooper S stood on top of the podium in this prestigious race with a Porsche 904 and a Saab 96 in second and third places - everyone was shocked.
Saab, Panhard, Mercedes, Citroën DS, Renault Dauphin Gordini, Jaguar and others used to host the first places of this race, but Mini?!
The tiny car that was meant to be a cheap and popular means of transportation?
But it just looked like a Mini, in fact it was a Mini that had been improved in John Cooper's workshop.
which increased the volume of its modest engine - 848 cc to a formidable 997 cc and its 34 horses became 55 horses.
They sat on a car with a featherweight of 635 kg, wheels on all corners of the chassis and excellent road handling and that aura of the Cooper and Cooper S that came later, Mini managed to preserve decades later, even when they did not look at all like the neighbor's car and drove Like her deranged daughter.
At the time, the only chance to catch a Ford Sierra RS500 was to drive one identical/manufacturer site
Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth
In the second half of the 80s, when Ford wanted to revive the sales of its large family car - the Sierra.
She decided to go to the one place she knows winning is worth a lot of money - the wet shirt competition - no, just like that, she went to motorsport.
With the support of Walter Haynes, one of the driving forces behind the GT40 project and more, they team up with Cosworth, with whom Ford has had an excellent history.
The companies outline more or less what they want from the car, with Cosworth being on the "more" side urging Ford to approve 180 hp and then 200 hp from the road version compared to the original limit of 150 hp.
A quick check among Ford dealers revealed that they are not exactly keen to sell this strange beast.
Haynes decides to resort to a trick that has already worked with the GT40 - he invites the dealers for a spin in the car - they quickly change their minds, open order books, and shortly after, the company reaches the minimum number of cars that allows it to introduce the model to the world circuit.
And the racing model was the real badass, from which the supercharged 2.0-liter engine extracted 480 and later almost 500 hp and showed high, if not absolute, dominance in almost every category in which it competed. It had championships in the World Saloon Championship, European Championship, Germany, Australia , Japan, New Zealand and more. Endurance racing and even rallying, including the strange 1987 season, in which Ford ran two Cosworth 500 cruisers for asphalt racing and the XR with the dual drive for snow racing, kurkar, etc. And with us? Remember the 1.3-liter Sierra with 60 hp S?
don't remember
Rightfully so.
Wild, exciting and everything but what we knew at the time in Israel/Manufacturer's website
Subaru Impreza WRX
Subaru already had limited success in the compact passenger car segment with the Leona, which even competed in rally events in its day.
But the car that succeeded it in late 1992, the Impreza, was to take the company to a completely different place.
No longer a small Japanese manufacturer with basic, reliable cars with a card of dual drive, but also ones that offer pure sports car performance in the body of a decent-looking family car.
In order to enhance this image, Subaru storms the new Group A for its time in the World Rally Tour with the Impreza.
And while the people sitting in Zion got an Impreza (sorry, "Grand Leone") with a 1.6-liter, 90-hp engine, the version that went on the rally tracks was a completely different animal that only resembled its neighbors in appearance.
It was based on the WRX version STI in Europe and in our country was called GT, and the outputs started at 208 hp (more than twice the normal version yes?) and up to 240, 250 and even 275 hp in the dedicated versions for races in Japan and Europe. But what the competitors met on the rally tracks when it entered Group A already There was a beast with 300 and later also 325 hp on 1.2 tons and of course dual drive and names like Ari Vatanen, Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz behind the wheel.
Absolutely not the leasing car of the neighbor from below/manufacturer's website
Hyundai i20WRC
Like Subaru, and in fact like almost every automaker, when Hyundai wanted to show the world what its sporty N division was worth, it did so on the World Rally Tour.
The more interesting incarnation of its race car is the one introduced in 2022, not only because of the hybrid engine, but because it came after Hyundai had already made a name for itself in the circuit and now needs a car to also maintain those achievements to prove it wasn't a one-off.
And while we can go out and buy the 100bhp 1.0-litre version or feel like we've really gone wild with the 204bhp i20 N, the race car is a completely different story.
Like the N, it also has a 1.6-liter turbo engine, but it ends there because in the racing version it extracts 380 hp from it and another 134 from the electric motor, which it reduces to asphalt/snow/crossroads with permanent dual drive.
On the way to conquer (also) the Peak/manufacturer site
Peugeot 205 T16
Like so many things that were excessive in the eighties - shoulder pads, hairstyles, music and inflation - also in the worlds of motor sports and especially in rallying, everything was excessive.
And the peak of exaggeration there was called Group B, which is neither the place nor the time to detail why it was excessive, but let's say this: you know that in every sports category there are rules, restrictions, laws - so forget it.
Group B was the place where the FIA more or less said to the manufacturers "swords, swords and good luck".
This general loosening of the reins gave birth to machines like the Lancia S4 and the 037 (also here), the Audi Quattro, Metro 6R4, Ford RS200 and other machines that very quickly and after several tragedies someone woke up and said "We've gone too far, Khalas" and scattered these monsters everywhere.
One of the most iconic cars of the era, but no less so, the fact that it continued to be successful even after Group B was officially disbanded was the Peugeot 205 T16.
So on the roads here there were 205 with a 1.1 liter engine (with 50 or 55 hp) or the 1.4 liter with 75 or 80 hp and also some GTi with 1.9 and 16 liter engines, the T16 is a completely different story.
What she and the 205 of the permanent man who once lived in your building had in common were more or less the headlights and the symbol.
Because the T16 had a turbo engine with 16 valves and hence its name, and it sat in the middle of the car and not in the front and it released in its moderate version 460 hp that carried only 910 kg thanks to a carbon fiber body and all this danced on all four wheels with its dual drive.
Even after the closing of Group B, the T16 continued to kick and kick hard with participation and victory in the Dakar Rally and also in the famous Pikes Peak race.
A side note: what all these achievements have in common, in the World Rally, Pikes Peak and Dakar - in all of them it was Ari Vatnen behind the wheel.
A racing car that rolled onto the public road/manufacturer's site
Mitsubishi Pajero Evo
It's the late 1990s and the Mitsubishi Pajero, like its counterparts in the SUV group, is gaining momentum among urban yuppies who wanted to buy a super Jeep.
A super jeep in the ridiculous sense of the phrase - a jeep that you drive to the supermarket.
But for Mitsubishi, whose Pajero has already gained a reputation in this group, it is not enough, so it launches the Pajero Evolution, or Pajero Evo for short.
And when the regular Pajero models of the time offered 99 or 125 hp with the 2.5 and 2.8 liter engines, it was a real spaceship.
Underneath the square, bloated and muscular chassis was a 3.5 liter V6 engine with a capacity of 276 atmospheric horses, four suspensions independents and three differentials. It looked like a Dakar car peeling off its decals and indeed it was one, with wins by Japanese racing driver Kenjiro Shinozuka and later German racing driver Jutta Kleinschmidt at the Dakar. 2,500 units were produced between 1997 and 1999, and they were all All it takes to make it one of the most desirable off-road icons.
Absolute dominance in almost every race in which a manufacturer participated/site
BMW E30 M3
The founder of the glorious dynasty that went by the name M3 at BMW was and still is one of the sports sedans that are considered the benchmark for driving pleasure.
BMW has already been involved in quite a few categories of motorsport, from Formula 1 to saloon car racing.
But the first M3 was the car with which the manufacturer proved that it was capable of building one model that could defeat its competitors in every category it sent it to.
At the heart of the car was a 4-cylinder engine that was developed in a record time of 14 days based on the in-line 6-cylinder engine.
2.5 liters, with a double overhead camshaft, 16 valves, 200 hp in its regular version and 300 or more horses in the racing versions. The
second half of the 1980s were its glory days with the DTM championships in 1987 and 1989, In Rallye Corsica and the 24 hours of the Nürburgring with places 1-2.To this day they are considered an excellent basis for building cars for gymkhana races, hill climbs and drifting.
Eats everything while showing disdain/site manufacturer
Porsche 959 Dakar
When it was introduced, the 959 was called "the world's fastest laboratory" due to the enormous amount of technology that went into what was considered its first supercar.
It had a boxer engine, six cylinders with a volume of 2.8 liters and with the help of two turbochargers it provided 450 hp. The car was able to offer ride quality and comfort accessories of a luxury car along with unprecedented performance for its time such as acceleration to 100 km/h in 3.6 seconds and speed The maximum it reached was 320 km/h.
Its racing version was initially intended to compete in Group B, and when this was cut short while the car had not yet made its debut, Porsche decided to change direction. Its new direction was very far from the worlds in which Porsche operated in those years and it was sent to challenge The absolute - the Paris Dakar Rally in its original, tough incarnation, the one that was a test not only of the car's performance, but of the ability to bring them to expression in the most difficult conditions.
The fact that the Dakar Rally did not require the production of a minimum number of cars as a condition for participation, resulted in the fact that in 1986 Porsche participated for the first time with The 959 races and comes home with first place when driven by Rene Mattag, second place under Jackie X and sixth place. That same year and with the same Rene Mattag it also wins the 24 Hours of Le Mans. A year later marketing begins The official of the car that becomes an eternal automotive legend overnight.
More on the same topic:
Peugeot
Mitsubishi
sexual
porsche
BMW
Ford