Iconic cars driven by British world champions Colin McRae and Richard Burns will highlight a display of historic vehicles to celebrate the 75th running of Wales Rally GB (3 - 6 October).

The spectacle at Thursday’s evening’s opening speed test at Oulton Park race circuit will also feature significant Ford Escorts and fire-breathing Group B machinery that have illuminated the British forests since 1932’s inaugural rally.

The final list of cars has still to be announced but Subaru Imprezas, which McRae piloted to the 1995 world title and which Burns drove to the crown six years later, will participate. Both drivers won Britain’s WRC encounter three times.

The first Royal Automobile Club Rally featured 342 competitors driving standard road cars to Torquay via a variety of 1000-mile routes. The £25 prize for the lowest number of penalty points was won by Colonel A. H. Loughborough in a Lanchester 15/18.



Off-road forest special stages were introduced in the early 1960s and Nordic drivers dominated for the next 30 years, their success only interrupted by Roger Clark’s home wins in 1972 and 1976.

The rally was included in the FIA World Rally Championship when it was founded in 1973 and six-time world champion Sébastien Ogier has been the master in recent seasons, with five wins in the last six years.

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