ON THIS DAY: 1987

Mention Prodrive in the service parks of the FIA World Rally Championship and you’ll immediately conjure images of blue and yellow Subarus winning rallies and titles either side of the Millennium celebrations.

Talk to a younger generation and they’ll tell you about Dani Sordo finishing second on the 2012 Rallye Monte-Carlo aboard a Mini John Cooper Works WRC from the same Banbury factory.

Prodrive has won six world titles (three manufacturers’ and three drivers’ with Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Petter Solberg) since it first competed in the WRC with a Porsche 911 SC RS in 1984.

But the first win for the British firm came on 9 May 1987, when Bernard Béguin won the Tour de Corse aboard a Prodrive-built and run BMW M3.

Prodrive had already committed to a touring car programme that year and there was a feeling the lightweight, nimble, rear-wheel drive M3 might work on the stages – especially the asphalt ones – as the sport scrambled to find four-wheel drive solutions post-Group B.

With just two months’ development and a handful of retirements on lesser rallies, optimism wasn’t exactly overflowing when Béguin and team-mate Marc Duez took the two M3s across the start.

Facing them were a trio of Martini Lancia Delta HF 4WD factory cars. There were Stig Blomqvist, Didier Auriol and Carlos Sainz all in Ford Sierra RS Cosworths and, of course, the Renault 11 Turbos driven by Jean Ragnotti, Francois Chatriot and Alain Oreille.

Prodrive might only have been in its fourth year of entering WRC rounds, but the team came with a wealth of experience – headed by former world champion co-driver David Richards. And while the M3s weren’t exactly works cars, the level of preparation and hardware input from Munich, indicated they weren’t far behind.

Without the hinderance of turbo lag, the 2.3-litre M3 was able to deliver its 280bhp as and when it was required and in a far more progressive fashion than its blown two-wheel drive opposition.

Béguin led from the start, with Ragnotti in close attendance. Renault’s twice winner of the event suffered a puncture when he went off in a hail and snowstorm on stage five. Lancia man Yves Loubet made the most of the damp conditions to ease past the leading M3, but the Delta’s early aversion to dry asphalt was exploited once the storm passed.

Béguin re-took the lead on stage 10 and kept it to the finish, where an emphatic two-minute victory was celebrated. ไพ่สลาฟ

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