Well, boys, here's some info on the car, you may find it on the web:
Car is a Fiat 131 Abarth replica of Fulvio Bacchelli's 1977 Rally NZ winning car. It even has the same Rego! It is fitted with a 2 litre 16 valve fuel injected engine Fiat engine delivering about 200BHP. It has a 5-speed straight cut, close ratio gearbox, and a wide 5-link live axle with LSD etc. Similar to Gp 4 Escort. It has big brakes with 4-pot callipers/disks all round and Bilstein suspension. It is a bit heavier than an Escort weighing in at 1070kg but makes up for that with its good looks! The car was built in 2003 from a derelict Fiat 131R. It was initially fitted with an 8 valve Fiat engine, standard gearbox and standard rear end setup. It has been slowly modified and has only recently been upgraded to the specification described above. Reliability has been a problem while we had to learn what weaknesses the car had.
The rally was the 2010 Silver Fern Rally in New Zealand. What I read from their website is the accident occurred in SS4 on the first day. No info on the accident itself, only the astatement "off road, permanent". Before they had electrical problems (well, it was a Fiat), but managed to rejoin the rally.
They went off a bank/cliff ending up nearly 300m from the road without really rolling - i.e. the car flew there and had pretty much 1 huge hit. driver was ok, co driver airlifted unconcious from the scene with broken sholuder and elbow. The rally contains alot of very fast straight roads where the cars are reaching speeds over 200km/hr, I'm not sure what speed they left the road at but you can only guess it was pretty high.
I think this was the only fiat in the rally too
half of the field and 10 of the top 13 cars were ford escorts!
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