r/rally

what are the rules for building a car other then the safety items?

im working on an all purpose Nissan Z build, something where i can do some slight adjustments and take it to drift or rally or autocross, whatever I feel like, part of this is figuring out what suspension to run, so i was wondering if anyone's ever seen air suspension be used for stuff like this and if so, what kind?

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?

I have been looking to get into rally for a while now and bought a 2015 Subaru Impreza four-door to get started. Definitely wasn't my first choice but it's what I could afford and I really was just looking to get started in the sport.

I put a 2-in lift on the vehicle thinking it would give me more versatility for tires that have thicker side walls and better ground clearance when it might be necessary. However I'm getting ready to try to register for my first event and the person who owns the track is saying that they think it is too dangerous to drive the Impreza with a 2-in lift on the track.

It is a very relatively flat track on dirt and grass and my track width to height ratio is 0.98 (and this is when rounding down just to be more pessimistic on case my measurements where not perfect.) is it particularly unusual to put a lift on a car like the 2015 Impreza? Did I mess up by doing this and is it going to prevent me from being able to enter a lot of events? At first glance it looks like I do meet the SCAA requirements but I am worried that this might be a problem and that I messed up by doing this.

As someone who's extremely new to the scene and hasn't even had an opportunity to really get their feet wet I'm curious what thoughts are from folks with more experience.