European Rally Championship (Group B era)
For drivers outside the world championship works teams, the European Rally Championship was the big prize. In the Group B years it was a sprawling series of around fifty rallies from Portugal to Bulgaria — and from 1983 onwards it belonged to Italian drivers in Lancias.
Episode 10 — Europe’s Group B: The European Rally Championship & the National Champions (1982–86)
The ERC’s fifty-round calendar and Lancia’s private champions feature in this episode.
How the ERC worked
The ERC was organised by FISA alongside the World Championship. Each round carried a coefficient from 1 to 4, and the points a driver scored were multiplied by it, so the big international events counted far more than small ones. The calendar mixed snow (the Jänner Rallye in Austria, the Arctic Rally and Hankiralli in Finland), the great asphalt classics of France, Belgium, Italy and Spain, gravel rallies such as the Costa Smeralda, Halkidiki and Cyprus, and events behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. From 1982 to 1984 the Swedish Rally counted for both the World and the European championships.
Champions
| Year | Driver | Co-driver | Car |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | Antonio ‘Tony’ Fassina | ‘Rudy’ | Opel Ascona 400 |
| 1983 | Miki Biasion | Tiziano Siviero | Lancia 037 |
| 1984 | Carlo Capone | Sergio Cresto | Lancia 037 |
| 1985 | Dario Cerrato | Giuseppe Cerri | Lancia 037 |
| 1986 | Fabrizio Tabaton | Luciano Tedeschini | Lancia Delta S4 |
Cerrato won the title again in 1987 in a Group A Lancia Delta HF 4WD.
Fifty rallies a season, points coefficients and four straight Lancia titles: the ERC from 1982 to 1986, season by season.
1982: Fassina and the Ascona 400
Italian drivers often raced under pseudonyms, and Fassina entered as ‘Tony’, with a co-driver listed as ‘Rudy’. In an Opel Ascona 400 he won the Costa Brava, the Spanish round at Bilbao, Madeira and Cyprus. Jimmy McRae, in a Rothmans Opel Ascona 400, won the Galway, Circuit of Ireland, Halkidiki and Manx rallies and finished runner-up. Franz Wittmann won the snowy Jänner Rallye in an Audi Quattro. On asphalt, Renault 5 Turbos won in France, and on the Tour de France Automobile Jean-Claude Andruet beat the Renaults in Charles Pozzi’s Ferrari 308 GTB. The Lancia 037 appeared too: Tonino Tognana won the Targa Florio and, in a Jolly Club 037, San Marino, and Fabrizio Tabaton the Valle d’Aosta in a Martini one.
1983: Biasion’s year
Miki Biasion and Tiziano Siviero, in a Jolly Club Lancia 037, won seven ERC rounds: the Costa Brava, Alicante, the Costa Smeralda, the 4 Regioni, the Ypres 24 Hours, Madeira and San Marino. Audi Quattros won on snow and in Belgium (Lasse Lampi in Finland; Marc Duez and Willy Lux at Spa and Landen), Guy Fréquelin won the Tour de France Automobile in a Rothmans Opel Manta 400 and Henri Toivonen won the Manx at his first attempt, with Ari Vatanen second.
1984: Capone against Toivonen
Carlo Capone and Sergio Cresto took the title in a Lancia 037, winning the Boucles de Spa, the Alicante rally, Albena, Halkidiki and Antibes. Their main rival was Henri Toivonen in Prodrive’s Rothmans Porsche 911 SC RS, who won the Costa Smeralda, the Ypres 24 Hours and Madeira before a back injury forced him to miss several rounds; he finished second. Harald Demuth’s Audi won five rounds in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland, Jean Ragnotti’s Renault 5 Turbo won the Critérium Alpin and the Tour de France Automobile, and Ingvar Carlsson won the Rajd Polski in a Mazda RX-7.
1985: Cerrato, and Peugeot in Germany
Dario Cerrato and Giuseppe Cerri (Lancia 037, Jolly Club) won the Costa Smeralda, Albena, Elba and the Targa Florio on their way to the title. Biasion won three more rounds, and Patrick Snijers’ Bastos 037 won four in Belgium and Switzerland. In Germany, Kalle Grundel won four ERC rounds in a Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 entered by Peugeot’s German importer. Ragnotti took the new Renault 5 Maxi Turbo to victory at Ypres and on the Tour de France Automobile, and Per Eklund headed the ERC classification of the South Swedish Rally in an Audi Quattro A2.
1986: the Delta S4 season
Fabrizio Tabaton and Luciano Tedeschini, in a Grifone Lancia Delta S4, won six rounds: the Costa Brava, Madeira, Halkidiki, Asturias, Catalunya and San Marino. On 16–18 April, two weeks before the Tour de Corse, Henri Toivonen and Sergio Cresto won the Costa Smeralda in a Martini Delta S4 — their last victory. Cerrato won Elba and the Targa Florio in a Jolly Club S4. Michèle Mouton and Terry Harryman won the Hessen and Deutschland rallies in a 205 T16; on the Hessen Rally, Marc Surer’s Ford RS200 left the road while fighting Mouton for the lead, and his co-driver Michel Wyder was killed. Robert Droogmans won four rounds in a Belga-backed RS200, and François Chatriot’s Renault 5 Maxi Turbo won three in France. After the deaths in Corsica, many stages of the Scottish Rally were cancelled to comply with FISA’s requirements.
Sources and open points. The champions follow English and French Wikipedia; event winners and cars come from eWRC-results.com, which does not show every car, so cars are named only where the source lists them. ‘Rudy’, Fassina’s co-driver in 1982, appears in the sources only under that pseudonym; his identity is not confirmed here. English Wikipedia describes Toivonen’s 1984 Porsche season as a run of five wins in a row; eWRC’s ERC results show second place at Albena between his Costa Smeralda and Ypres wins, so we name only the individual wins. Final ERC points tables were not available to us.
In pictures 2 photos
More from Championships
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN), European Rally Championship — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Rally_Championship
- Wikipedia (FR), Championnat d'Europe des rallyes — https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Championnat_d%27Europe_des_rallyes
- Wikipedia (EN), Henri Toivonen — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Toivonen
- eWRC-results.com, FIA European Rally Championship 1982 (event results) — https://www.ewrc-results.com/season/1982/6-erc/
- eWRC-results.com, FIA European Rally Championship 1983 (event results) — https://www.ewrc-results.com/season/1983/6-erc/
- eWRC-results.com, FIA European Rally Championship 1984 (event results) — https://www.ewrc-results.com/season/1984/6-erc/
- eWRC-results.com, FIA European Rally Championship 1985 (event results) — https://www.ewrc-results.com/season/1985/6-erc/
- eWRC-results.com, FIA European Rally Championship 1986 (event results) — https://www.ewrc-results.com/season/1986/6-erc/
All text is original writing for Grouve Sports Management Group, based on the sources above. Facts checked on 21 October 2026.
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