u/Alev233

When I was a kid I was never into rallying because I had only seen modern rally cars, basically glorified hatchbacks and I thought they were ugly and uninteresting especially compared to sleek and beautiful Le Mans prototypes or F1 cars. But then I saw the Top Gear episode on Lancia and I fell in love with old rally cars. The Fulvia was nice but in particular the Stratos and 037 were such gorgeous things that could also handle the roughest and toughest really stages. And of course the Group B cars even though they sometimes didn’t look as beautiful as a Stratos or 037, had incredibly impressive engineering and were beautiful in their own way of pushing the boundaries of what was possible (Delta S4 being my favorite of those).

And I understand that the insanity of group B isn’t really possible in the WRC today, but why is it that modern rally cars are hatchbacks based on road cars instead of something like a drop dead gorgeous and beautiful Lancia Stratos? Surely manufacturers could make sufficient numbers of a purpose built rallying sports car for road homologation and they used to do it but they no longer do it today, or at the very least try to experiment a little more with aero or something? Especially with how far technology has come since the 80s

I don’t understand why no one has tried to make the equivalent of a purpose built rallying prototype sports car within the current rules that would be eye catching and beautiful and push the limits of the rules rather than fielding boring hatchbacks with rather simplistic aero?

Edit: I’m not trying to attack rallying or anything like that, I really like classic rallying, I’m just admittedly frustrated that WRC used to have beautiful and interesting cars and now it’s just dominated by hatchbacks rather than beautiful rule pushing sports cars. I’ve been an F1 fan all my life so I’m used to stuff like the double diffuser or DAS or other forms of pushing the rules and I know rallying used to have that spirit but I don’t see it anymore and that’s what I don’t understand, where did it go?

The title is the question. The US gets almost none of its oil from the Middle East, the worst possible effects of this war with Iran for the US are higher oil prices.

A war with China to defend Taiwan would be much much worse and more damaging economically, as China still, despite recent American efforts to reshore manufacturing, still contributes a lot in terms of making stuff the US market buys, and not to mention that if Taiwan is under attack 90% of the world’s high level semiconductor supply is also at a minimum highly disrupted for years. The Degree of economic damage this would cause would be exponentially worse for everyone involved than that of the current war with Iran.

Many of the same liberal leaning Americans who are screaming and complaining about the increase in gas prices due to this war in Iran are the same people who would (correctly imo) support defending Taiwan from China and who (correctly imo) supported US aid to Ukraine against Russia. How are these people supposed to handle the unavoidable economic consequences of a war to defend Taiwan when they can’t seem to handle the far less severe economic consequences of this war with Iran?

And yes it is 100% true that in a war between China and the US over Taiwan china would suffer economically even worse than the US, but that is already the case in this current war with Iran, both China and Iran economically today are suffering worse than the US is today.

Edit: By “can’t handle it” I mean being so unwilling to accept the economic sacrifice and support the country in its war effort that the popular sentiment becomes an asset to the enemy/detrimental to the military victory of the country. Or in simpler terms, people believe so strongly that the economic pain is not worth it that fighting the war or even continuing it until victory becomes politically toxic. Which is precisely what is happening in relation to the Iran war right now

Edit 2: I’m not on the side of China, I’m very much against the CCP, I ask this question because I’m a South Korean who is truthfully terrified at the lack of resolve and will to fight the American public is showing over this Iran war, because if the pain of Iran is too much for Americans to wish to fight then Korea, Taiwan, etc are fucked as we won’t be able to count on a determined and committed American military action to defend us.