The first thing that you will notice about a rally car is that it's a car. Specifically, it's a compact
sedan or a small sports car, modified for safety and performance. The smaller products from
Dodge, Ford, Mazda, Mitsubishi and Subaru all have their following among rallyists.

A rally car is NOT a specially-built track racer such as NASCAR and Indy car racing teams have.
Nor is it a dune buggy, such as they use in desert races in Baja California.

Safety is important to rallyists, so all cars are fitted with a steel "roll cage" in the cockpit area to
protect the occupants in a crash, safety belts and fire extinguishers. Occupants must wear
helmets and fire-resistant suits.

To cope with the bumps, dips and twists on country roads, rally cars get heavy-duty springs and
shock absorbers. A metal "skid plate" under the car keeps bumps and rocks from harming the
engine or transmission.

Rally cars are traditionally divided into classes, separating the small-engine models from those
with large engines or turbochargers, two-wheel-drive from four-wheel-drive, and stock from
modified. This keeps the slowest production cars from having to compete directly against
modified 4wd turbo-cars for an award.

But to fully understand a rally car, you must drive one down a narrow, bumpy section of country
road, at speeds that most people reserve for the highway. At that moment a rally car is truly
something special.