Citroën Visa Trophée: from humble beginnings

By Richard Heseltine

| 1 Aug 2024

Classic & Sports Car – Citroën Visa Trophée: from humble beginnings

It would appear that pleasure and discomfort can coexist.

Having threaded your way past the Citroën Visa Trophée’s rollcage, fallen into the race seat and wrestled the harness into submission, it’s time to fire up.

It’s steamily hot in here, your forehead beading with sweat as you pump the throttle and turn the key. And nothing. And again. And nothing.

Finally, reluctantly, the very first car ever homologated for Group B rallying coughs into life.

The Citroën Visa Trophée was an entry-level Group B competitor

It’s loud, naturally, and each flex of the accelerator ushers in more fanfare.

It sounds startlingly exuberant, if only to the onlookers who had stopped to take in the scenic vistas of the Iberian Peninsula but now have their backs to them. Smile for the cameras.

Righty-ho, slot the lever into gear. Okay, try again because it’s a mite gristly… And we’re in.

Ease off the clutch, give it some gas and off we go, off-piste, kicking up dust between the trees.

There’s some residual compliance in the suspension – but then it is a Citroën, with all that entails.

Even so, it’s getting busy in here, but boy is it fun.

The Citroën’s 1299cc slant-four engine got twin Weber 40 DCOE carburettors

The Citroën Visa Trophée is communicative beyond merely being vocal, although ‘fidgety’ is perhaps closer to the truth.

What is conspicuously absent is the sort of speed normally associated with Group B.

In the mind’s eye, this was the knife-fight-rules era of rallying, the mere mention of it conjuring images of bestial, mid-engined monsters teetering on the brink of oblivion.

What doesn’t spring to mind is a 1.3-litre hatchback with twin carbs and go-quicker stripes.

Nevertheless, this is a car with serious motorsport pedigree, the nub of the matter being that what precisely constitutes a Group B rally car is easily misconstrued.

The Citroën Visa Trophée scrabbles and fidgets, and demands your attention

Fire-belching supercars with token nods to road use formed only part of this innocuous-sounding category.

After dragging its feet in announcing the rules, organising body Convers Sports Initiatives (CSI) declared that Group 1 and Group 2 would be replaced by Group N and Group A for ‘unmodified’ and ‘modified’ production touring cars respectively for 1982.

A minimum of 5000 needed to be made.

Group B replaced Group 3 and Group 4, the requirement being that 200 cars had to be produced, while also permitting a limited run of evolutionary models.

The patience-bothering regulations allowed for plenty of latitude – front- or mid-engined, two driven wheels or four, and so on – plus there were 15 classes within all the groups based on engine capacity, with an equivalence formula applied for engines with forced induction (a 1.4-litre turbo would run in the 2-litre class, for example).

The Visa Trophée looks oddly innocuous at rest

Cars such as the Citroën Visa Trophée sat in the lesser ‘B’ classes that aimed to offer entry-level, cheap-to-buy cars that were nevertheless equally garnished with trick bits.

Each class also had weight limits and rules for wheel sizes and the like.

This is but a thumbnail sketch of what was involved, and it’s worth saying that many existing cars were simply reformatted and resubmitted for Group B.

Citroën was quickest off the mark in filing the necessary paperwork, but then its tilt at rallying was multi-pronged.

It had a rich history in the sport, too.

The DS19 had bagged outright honours on the 1959 Rallye Monte-Carlo, the DS21 claiming this season-opener in 1966 (but only after the exclusion of all the cars that preceded it).

The Trophée’s functional dashboard echoes the Citroën Visa’s standard interior

The DS won again in 1967. Away from Monte-Carlo, there were several big wins, not least the gruelling Liège-Sofia-Liège in 1961.

René Trautmann won that year’s European Rally Trophy, too.

Fast-forward to 1968 and Lucien Bianchi was the moral victor of the London to Sydney Marathon – his works Citroën was struck by a Mini on a closed stage with barely 30 miles to go.

Nevertheless, the factory competition department’s circumstances were somewhat reduced by the time the Citroën Racing Team’s SM claimed victory on the Morocco Rally in April 1971; the French firm’s penury nixed its competition forays thereafter.

However, the marque returned in the 1980s via the Visa, if not immediately to the frontline.

Of-their-era Cibié lamps complete the picture

The car pictured here was conceived for a one-make series, after all, even if this competition encompassed rounds of the World Rally Championship.

It was also tailored to clubman drivers looking to step up to the big – or at least bigger – leagues.

Citroën’s paymasters wanted to bestow upon the company a sporting image in a bid to attract a more youthful audience, and for the least-possible outlay. Motorsport was its medium.

The Visa was the only Citroën of the period to use such prosaic items as coil springs and telescopic dampers, while its Douvrin-built 1219cc slant-four engine was shared with the Peugeot 104 and Renault 14 TL.

Even so, the Trophée was a proper rally car.

‘Our’ Citroën Visa Trophée’s rallying provenance

For starters, the less than weighty Citroën Visa GT went on a dieting regime.

The bonnet, doors and tailgate here were single-skin glassfibre items, while much of the glazing was replaced with Plexiglas.

All unnecessary cabin fixtures and fittings were also discarded.

The cars were built by Heuliez and prepared by Citroën Compétitions, the engine receiving twin Weber 40 DCOE carbs and a few other tweaks to produce an alleged 103bhp.

It was just the ticket for a budding Jean-Pierre Nicolas or Michèle Mouton.

The 1982 Trophée International Visa was nothing if not ambitious: cars with a rollcage and other safety equipment cost entrants the equivalent of around £5200.

The Citroën Visa Trophée was a surprise first entry to the Group B fold

The 101-event, pan-European calendar allowed competitors to tailor their programme to suit their budget and location, the overall champion being decided by a complicated points-scoring system.

It wasn’t all rough-and-tumble stuff, either: there were 59 rallies that included rounds of the French national series, plus the Scottish, Manx and RAC classics.

The remainder comprised hillclimbs – 33 in France alone – plus circuit races.

With support from Total, Michelin, Valeo and Marchal, it proved a success, with a prize fund of £130,000 almost ensuring as much.

Non-entrants also enjoyed a bumper year, and not just in France.

The Chris Sclater Automotive-fielded, Citroën UK-backed car of John Weatherley won the 1300cc class of the Pace Petroleum/Autosport National Rally Championship that same year.

The former karting ace was also runner-up in the Group B category of the Rothmans Open Rally Championship.

The Citroën’s stripped-out cabin contributes to the Trophée’s waif-like 695kg kerbweight

Meanwhile, at works level, the multi-marque PSA conglomerate spread its bets.

The Talbot sister brand was expected to pitch a Group B version of the similarly engineered Samba for 1983, but didn’t (although it did create a prototype Horizon with a glassfibre body and Lotus Esprit underpinnings).

Instead, PSA chose to go with what in time became the Peugeot 205 T16, while Citroën persevered with the Visa.

It had already begun production of the Chrono edition, which featured subtle exterior tweaks, a larger-displacement 1360cc engine, a bigger-valve head and twin Solex 35 carbs.

More than 2000 road cars were sold at home and around 1600 elsewhere in Europe, while 20 full-house evolutionary rally cars were built by Citroën Compétitions for use in the B9 class.

The works squad retained a dozen cars, with the remainder offered to the top privateers who had run a Trophée in the French national rally championship in 1982.

The Citroën’s go-faster stripes don’t contribute to this car’s claimed 130bhp output

Weatherley, meanwhile, picked up from where he left off in 1983 in a works-backed Chrono.

Citroën then followed through with the four-wheel-drive Visa Mille Pistes, named after the rally in which the prototype won the experimental class in 1983.

As per homologation requirements, 200 replicas were made.

Works and privateer cars often humbled more powerful rivals – witness Mark Lovell’s 12th place overall and class win on the 1984 RAC Rally.

The model continued to show form long after Citroën introduced its BX 4TC for the 1985 season.

As a caveat to the story, it’s worth recalling that more extreme Visas were evaluated as far back as 1981.

‘The Citroën Visa Trophée was a proper rally car. The bonnet, doors and tailgate were glassfibre; much of the glazing was Plexiglas’

First there was a rear-wheel-drive car with a 2-litre, four-cylinder Renault unit allied to a Hewland transmission.

A mid-engined, supercharged, 1.4-litre four-wheel-drive car followed in its wake, as did a 2.5-litre PRV V6-powered car, also with four-wheel drive.

Finally, there was a rear-wheel-drive car with a turbocharged 2174cc Lotus unit behind the seats.

Which all brings us to a blisteringly hot summer’s day and a Citroën Visa resplendent in its tricolore warpaint.

That said, this example wore Gauloises livery for part of its 1982 campaign, the highlight for driver Luís Alegria being third overall on that year’s Algarve Rally, which was concurrently a round of both the Portuguese and European rally championships.

The Citroën Visa Trophée was a stepping stone for clubman competitors hoping to prove their skills

The little Visa was only headed by a pair of Ford Escort RS 1800s, another similar car placing fourth.

In its current state it has been described as a Trophée-plus-a-bit.

Nobody seems to be sure of the precise output, but it may be making as much as 130bhp.

Cars that competed in the one-make series had a displacement of 1216cc; others (such as ours) 1299cc or more.

On the move, the Citroën is only happy when it’s being caned and changing up at valve bounce.

It has no torque; not even trace elements. It’s a case of power all the way, save a few lifts to co-ordinate with changes of direction.

The Citroën Visa Trophée is a serious, rally-bred machine, but it still entertains

Your main point of focus is the rev-counter, with its 6500rpm redline; in period, some drivers reputedly changed up at 8000rpm (presumably a rod departed the block at 8001rpm).

While you have no choice but to rev it hard, that’s no great chore because the Citroën sounds so fruity.

It barks and then bellows, pop-pop-popping on the overrun. It’s hard not to smile, even though you’re not given much time to relax.

Much of this is because of the suspension set-up. Unlike most small performance hatches of the day, it allows the front end to pivot to a degree of roll without cocking an inside front wheel.

The bucket seat and full harness remind you of this car’s purpose

That’s very commendable, but there lingers the usual front-wheel-drive squirm.

The Citroën retains an attacking posture at all times, and there is always enough power to throttle-steer accurately on the dusty stuff, albeit with a certain amount of tug through the steering wheel.

There are only 2.5 turns from lock to lock, and it’s a quick rack to be sure; to dust off much-overused journalistic parlance, the steering is full of feel.

The pull from the driving wheels is a constant: this is in no way a point-and-squirt rally weapon.

The Citroën is a brilliant little car, though. Once you’re accustomed to its foibles, not least its close-coupled shift pattern, it’s a hoot.

The Citroën’s raucous 1299cc ‘four’ needs to be worked hard to deliver its c130bhp performance

On asphalt, the Citroën Visa Trophée clings on as long as you trust it. Let the revs die and you’re done for; keep the power on and the car pulls wide.

You think you’re about to make a Visa-shaped hole in the landscape, but no, it finds its own way back to the correct line.

It’s eerily unnerving the first time, child’s play the second. Stopping short of using the handbrake and adopting a Scandi-flick, it rockets through corners.

The middle pedal is stiff, but the brakes work well – they do only have 695kg to arrest.

Unfortunately, our fun is swiftly brought to an abrupt halt by a slipping clutch.

‘The Citroën Visa Trophée is only happy when it’s being caned and changing up at valve bounce. It has no torque; not even trace elements’

As such, there is no time to see if it can be coaxed into left-foot-brake-induced oversteer, which is perhaps just as well.

That’s the thing about the Visa Trophée: it lulls you into thinking that you’re a better driver than you are. It is easy to appreciate why stars established and future loved them 40-plus years ago.

In period, it was likened to a latter-day Mini Cooper ‘S’, and it’s a fair comparison provided that Mini is highly tuned and has a limited-slip differential.

You could also argue that the Visa Trophée marked the jumping-off point for Citroën’s subsequent dominance in rallying.

Think Xsara WRC. Think C4 WRC. Think DS3 WRC. Think eight world manufacturers’ titles. You have to start somewhere.

Images: Bernardo Lúcio

Thanks to: Manuel Ferrão and Adelino Dinis

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