Top 25: Muscle Cars on dirt

Rallying is a spectacle unlike anything else in world motorsport. But as impressive as today’s incredible turbo all-wheel-drive rally missiles are, they’re just not as exciting to watch as a good old fashioned rear-drive muscle car thundering and opposite-locking its way through the forests. It is a sad but true fact, however, that old-school muscle cars don’t win rallies these days: if you want to win, you must have the latest whiz-bang all-wheel-drive turbo. But if you just want to have a lot of fun in the forests, and impress the rally spectators, then get yourself something like one of these 25 rock-throwing dirt beasts. And before our inbox gets flooded by aggrieved speedway fans, we’d like to declare that for this top 25 we’ve drawn a line in the sand, or should we say dirt, by limiting it to rally-type competition. We may well look at the muscle masters of the clayways another time.

Story: Steve Normoyle

Jim Hunter Baja XF Falcon Ute In the mid 1980s former touring car racer Jim Hunter decided he’d have a go at the legendary Baja 1000 off-road race. Jim stunned the yanks, winning his class on debut in his self-built 351 XF Ute. The Aussie-built Baja ute impressed the Americans not just with its incredible speed, but because of some of the radical engineering concepts it featured – ideas which have since been copied in off-road chassis construction many times.

HDT Monaro HT GTS 350 The first Holden Dealer Team rally cars were Monaros. Team boss Harry Firth’s first Holden rally car started life as a HT model with a 253 V8 but later became a 350. But, Firth noted, the big Monaro was not the ideal tool for the forests: “they could not do the times on twisty sections and they did not like mud and sand. Physically they were impossible with no power steering and tiny brakes.” The HT ended up as a rallycross car, where it was spectacular, if equally unsuited.

Evan Green World Cup Rally Leyland P76 In 1974 Evan Green took on the World Cup Rally in a Leyland P76. Green chose the seemingly unlikely 3.5-litre V8 sedan for its size, lightness and performance, and early in the 17,000km rally it looked a potential threat. They finished 13th but would have done better if not for a failed front strut. Along the way Green set fastest time on the Sicilian stage that used the old Targo Florio sports car road race course – prompting a proud-as-punch Leyland Australia to release a special P76 ‘Targa Florio’ edition.

Peter Lang HDT Torana GTR XU-1 If the XU-1 was pretty handy on the black stuff, it was equally at home on dirt – as four consecutive ARC titles from 1971 to ’74 shows. Interestingly, the HDT found it was able to apply some of the lessons learned from its XU-1 rally effort to its road racing programme – and vice versa. We could have picked any one of a number of HDT LJ rally cars but we’ve gone for Peter Lang’s ’73 title winner, notable for its unusual plain white HDT livery.