Surely one of the most unlikely Group B contenders, the Citroën Visa Mille Pistes was a development of the preceding Visa Trophée and Visa Chrono models that the works team had campaigned in the early 1980s.

Developed under the direction of Guy Verrier and intended to give amateur rally drivers access to the premier Group B category, the Mille Pistes (named after the eponymous event) kept the basic front-mounted, transverse engine layout of the Visa road car, but added four-wheel drive to the package for the first time.

Its engine was the same 1,360cc overhead-cam four found in various Citroën/Peugeot models, boosted in power to a maximum of 145bhp (in ‘Evo’ tune) courtesy of a pair of Weber 40DCOE twin-choke carburettors.

The customer version, 200 of which were built to meet the homologation requirements, came with 112bhp as standard.

Stripped of the road car’s steel body panels and glass side windows, which were replaced by plastic, the Mille Pistes weighed only 850kgs, giving it...