The Ford RS200E is an 80’s rallying legend, no other Group B car came close to the RS200 in the one year it had in competition (before Group B was abolished). After 1986 when Group B had been cancelled many Group B rally cars found homes in rally cross, sprints, and hill climb events. This RS200 is the Mach 2 Racing Pikes Peak version with a recorded 840bhp!

The original Group B RS200 was good, but this RS200 is sublime. The whole car has been re-engineered from the ground up and all round performance and ability has been pushed way beyond anything Ford had ever intended. It is an honour to have this car included in the car line up for SEGA Rally, and I can hand-on-heart say this is the fastest car in the whole game, can you keep it on the track though?

There is an interesting little story about this car which you may find entertaining. When we were taking our research photos of the car prior to building the in-game model, the sound guys were recording engine samples for the in-game sound effects. To cut a long story short the car is run on a rolling road while the sound chaps record the exhaust and engine noises at various engine revs. Just as one of the Art Team went around the back of the car taking shots, the car lunched its gearbox and spat most of it out of the back end. Fortunately the Mach 2 Racing team were able to fix the car and we were able to complete the sound recording a few weeks later.

And that’s it - the SEGA Rally cars - hope you enjoy racing them as much as I have enjoyed developing them!

Check out the official SEGA Rally website now at www.segarally.com

Read more SEGA Rally blogs - click here

When I first began researching potential cars for SEGA Rally back in late 2005, one area that I always thought would be successful for car content was Hill Climb events. These international events are where entrants compete against the clock to complete an uphill course. Many events are based on winding tarmac surfaces, but courses like the infamous Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado are a 12.4 mile rough cut gravel surface, that winds up the side of Pikes Peak to a height of 14,100 feet.

Many cars entering these fearsome contests are bespoke home made purpose built machines or very heavily developed factory customizations. We decided that SEGA Rally should have its own Pikes Peak Racer, so after a bit of research I discovered that the Open Car class entrants used what looked like off-road Formula 1 cars.

These vary a lot between competitors due to them being entirely hand-built specifically for the purpose of this event, so I also had to design our car from scratch. Fortunately I had just completed the Baja Dune Buggy, and I had built that car around a tubular space frame (exactly the same build process used on Open Pikes Peak Racers). So I stripped the Buggy of all external body parts, lights, spare wheel etc and then set about re-profiling the overall scale and space frame shape. The Buggy is also a 2 seater so I had to reduce and completely re-design the cockpit space (Open Racers are single seaters).

Once I had correctly proportioned the main frame I set about re-working the suspension and open wheel style front and rear wheels/tyres. The final task was to build the lightweight body panels and front and rear spoilers; these were the cherry on the cake as all Pikes Peak Racers need excessive front and rear wings to create the necessary down force required.

So what you see is the final result, I think it looks bonkers and quite unlike anything else in SEGA Rally (nothing like the original Buggy model anyway!) In-game the Pikes Peak Racer is insanely fast, possibly one of the fastest cars in the game. The power-to-weight balance is crazy as the car doesn’t weigh anything but has massive amounts of BHP. The thing to bear in mind when racing this car is that corners come up very quickly and you’ll need to be very handy with the brakes.

As this is an in-house designed car, we had complete freedom over the livery design and colour way. We chose to use the Vision Racer as the main sponsor as it fitted in with the general feel of this car; the colours of the logos are strong enough to be visible on the minimal bodywork and extreme angles and shapes. Vision Racer also supply us with the high tech driving seat-ware that we use to display SEGA Rally on at shows and press events, so the space frame basis of the Pike Peak Racer kind of fits in with the space frame technology of the Vision Racer simulations hardware.

Check out the official SEGA Rally website now at www.segarally.com

Read more SEGA Rally blogs - click here

Read more about Vision Racer at www.visionracer.com