Rally of NZ 1985

I'm off to New Zealand for a few days tomorrow and this has prompted me to dig deep into the box full of negatives and find these photos from the Rally of New Zealand in 1985.This was the era of the amazing Group B rally cars .They were absolute weapons-lightweight,turbocharged ,4wd and spectacularly fast and incredibly noisy.What more could you want?.
In 1985 it was a battle between the Audi Quattros and the Peugeot Turbo16s.This was the start of Audi's emergence as a performance car manufacturer and Peugeot really had their mojo- which they have sadly lost nowadays.The Group B era only lasted 3 years until following a tragic accident the cars were banned on safety grounds.
The Peugeots took first and second places in the NZ Rally and won the 1985 World Rally Championship.
I went over to NZ with a group of Australian motoring journalists .It was a great trip as we had helicopters to transport us between stages.The scenery was spectacular and the weather was fine.I used an Olympus OM2 to take these shots on colour negative film.I took mainly slides on the trip but on the last day I ran out of film and had to grab some print film from a little village store in the mountains.I loaned my slides to a motoring magazine for use in an article on the rally.It was only last year, 26 years later, that I discovered that they had duped my slides and returned to me very second rate copies and kept the originals! That's life.
I just count myself very lucky to have seen these amazing cars in action in such spectacular country.