Video: 1978 Lombard RAC Rally
With the UK’s round of the World Rally Championship taking place this weekend we thought it apt to rewind the clock forty years and bring you this video of the 1978 Lombard RAC Rally.
While today’s crews will be facing a total of 23 stages and a total of 197.8 miles (318.34km) of competition, the 1978 event featured 76 stages and 444.5 miles (715.37km) of testing forest tracks. The round was won by Hannu Mikkola and Arne Hertz in a Ford Escort RS1800, the seventh win in a row for the Escort.
The win was the first of Mikkola’s four RAC Rally wins, he took the final win for the Escort a year later, before winning in 1981 and 1982 in an Audi Quattro, the first wins for a four wheel drive car. Although the Escort was the car thatwon the rally, it was a time of wide variety in the field, so watch out in the video for Tony Pond pushing hard in the V8 Triumph TR7!
Results:
1 Hannu Mikkola/Arne Hertz (Ford Escort RS1800 MKII) 8h47m23s
2 Bjorn Waldegard/Hans Thorszelius (Ford Escort RS1800 MKII) +5m18s
3 Russell Brookes/Derek Tucker (Ford Escort RS1800 MKII) +11m32s
4 Tony Pond/Fred Gallagher (Triumph TR7 V8) +15m46s
5 Anders Kullang/Bruno Bergland (Opel Kadett GT/E) +26m25s
6 Walter Rohrl/Christian Geistdorfer (Fiat 131 Arbarth) +30m24s
7 John Taylor/Phil Short (Ford Escort RS1800 MKII) +31m57s
8 Andy Dawson/Terry Harryman (Datsun 160J) +33m28s
9 Henri Toivonen/Juhani Korhonen (Chrysler Sunbeam) +40m00s
10 Bror Danielsson/Bob de Jong (Opel Kadett GT/E) +4m29s
