in 2008
Peugeot Talbot Sport, having made a successful late-season entry to Group B with their new
Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 car, returned in 1985 for a full season with the car.
Ari Vatanen, who had won three of the last four rallies of 1984 in the car, also returned with the team and in the first rally of the season, passed
Walter Röhrl's
Quattro in the snowy and icy terrain after incurring an eight-minute penalty caused by co-driver
Terry Harryman's error. At the
Swedish Rally, Vatanen won again, establishing himself as the early favorite for a driver's title, as well as putting Peugeot ahead of Audi. A disaster struck in May at the
Tour de Corse. On the 4th stage of the rally, Italian driver
Attilio Bettega crashed his
Lancia 037 into a tree and was killed instantly. His co-driver
Maurizio Perissinot survived the crash uninjured. The crash raised questions about the safety aspects of
Group B cars. Exactly one year later at the same event
Henri Toivonen suffered a similar fatal accident forcing
FIA to ban
Group B. Unfortunately, Vatanen had a major accident in
Argentina while speeding down a long, straight road in top gear when his car crashed and rolled end-over-front. The flimsy exterior of the car shattered, but the strong
rollcage absorbed most of the impact. The drivers were airlifted to hospital by Peugeot's helicopter, and Vatanen's injuries were severe and seemed life-threatening. Although he would recover and return to the sport, the Peugeot team was forced to turn to its other driver,
Timo Salonen. Salonen had already taken the points lead and finished with the driver's championship on the strength of five rally wins. driven in 1985
Audi Sport faced the dual pressure of Peugeot's strong 205 car in competition, and waning company commitment to the Quattro rally program. With the danger of the Group B rally becoming a more publicized issue, the company was questioning its involvement in the sport unless major changes were made to improve safety. While both
Stig Blomqvist and Walter Röhrl were retained as drivers, they suffered generally at the hands of the Peugeot team although they would ultimately place second and third respectively. Their season however only included a single rally win between them, with Röhrl's triumph at Sanremo proving to be Audi's last Group B victory in the World Rally Championship. The
Lancia Martini team's season was an even greater disappointment than Audi's. The rear-wheel drive
Lancia Sport 037 met with little success, even in the hands of such drivers as
Markku Alén,
Massimo Biasion, and
Henri Toivonen. Toivonen would suffer an accident, breaking three vertebrae in his neck early on and missing most of the season. The team awaited the arrival of the
Delta S4, a four-wheel-drive car, hoping it would give them a competitive advantage. Arriving for the final rally of the season, the
RAC Rally, it succeeded in collecting the victory and giving the team hope for competing in the
following season.
Austin Rallying made its entrance to the rally scene with the new
MG Metro 6R4 and its 3.0L V6 engine, taking a podium position at the RAC. Austin's success would be brief, however, as the Metro would struggle in the final season of Group B competition in 1986. As with previous seasons, while all 12 events were calculated for tallying the drivers' scores, only 11 of the events applied to the championship for manufacturers. The event in 1985 which applied only to driver standings was
Rallye Côte d'Ivoire. ==Calendar==