This month's Rally of China replaces the ground-breaking Hong Kong-Beijing Rally, held every year since 1993 and first run in 1985. This year's event begins 60 kilometres north of Beijing on June 20 and will follow an internationally accepted 'cloverleaf' course instead of the gruelling 3,800-kilometre straight-line dash of previous years.
Favourites this time round are the Prodrive-run 555 Subaru Imprezas of 1995 world rally champion Colin McRae, with his co-driver, popular Welshman Nicky Grist; and Swede Kenneth Eriksson, the 1996 Asia-Pacific rally champion. Eriksson's co-driver is fellow countryman Staffan Parmander.
The Impreza is an ideal vehicle for this type of event: light - down to the weight limit of 1,230 kilograms - tough, and with a wide track and a flat 'boxer' engine that lowers the car's centre of gravity. This year, Prodrive engineers, based in Banbury, central England, have come up with a shorter, lighter six-speed gearbox which allows the engine to be mounted further back than before to aid weight distribution.
While the 'box' currently uses a traditional H-gate layout, there are plans to test a sequential gearbox next year, although both McRae and Eriksson see no real advantage to this system.
Previous rally championship contenders from Subaru have been four-door vehicles, but the 1997 car is based on the two-door Impreza body shell. Prodrive claims it costs about $1.9 million (without counting labour costs) to build a Subaru rally car, while an engine would set you back $635,000.
Surprisingly, the rally cars run on unleaded fuel and are equipped with catalytic converters, almost identical to Subaru road cars. Wheels and tyres for the rally cars come from BBS and Pirelli respectively, the overall diameter restricted to a maximum of 650 millimetres.
On loose surfaces, 15-inch wheels are used to give greater sidewall compliance to the tyres, while for tarmac events, such as the exciting Rally de France on Corsica, ultra-low-profile tyres with stiffer sidewalls are mounted on 18-inch wheels. Larger wheels also permitted the fitting of bigger brake discs which - for Corsica, with its higher speeds and greater grip - were also water-cooled.