The RS1700T was undoubtedly a brilliant design, mainly due to John Wheeler, and a very promising rally car. It had proved extremely quick when testing in Portugal with Finnish drivers Ari Vatanen and Pentti Airikkala, where they demonstrated that it was probably the quickest vehicle at that time on hard surfaces, with a 0-60mph (0-97kph) time of 4.2 seconds. But - and this was a big but - it was not yet as good as the four-wheel-drive Audi Quattro on slippery surfaces like ice, snow, gravel and muddy forest roads.
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