In the second year as an international the organisers presented the 83 starters with a marathon 96 mile route. Starting in Newtown's main street the crews plunged straight in to a demanding 20mile stage in Hafren. The remainder of the mileage was made up of seven further forest tests and the usual two laps of Town Park in Telford to finish.

The overwhelming majority of the entries were in the smaller engined classes and thirty one of those were in the Skoda or Peugeot one make championships. Leading the Peugeots was future World Champion Richard Burns.

In amongst the six entries in the big car class were two Ford Cosworth Sapphire 4x4's for Russell Brookes and another future World Champion, Colin McRae. Subaru had chosen 'the Audi Sport' for the British debut of its new rally team with entries for two Legacys. Driven by Markku Alen and Possum Bourne these two cars were challengers for overall victory.

During the rally the transmissions failed on both Subaru's. Markku before the last forest stage whilst leading Russell by 35 secs.

The final result was that Russell beat Colin by 17seconds after a mammoth 104 minutes of special stages. This meant that although Colin got the points for second place he could not overtake Dai Llewellyn who had already secured the RACMSA British Championship title for a second year.

Despite the high stage mileage and massive promotion by Audi Sport entries were thin. Audi itself was looking at alternative sports to promote its product line.Telford Development Corporation, which had been key to making the various venues available to the rally, was to be wound up at the end of the year. The mantle was taken over by the local authority and things would not be as easy. These changes did not bode well for the ongoing battle to maintain the renown organisational standards of the rally.

A further problem was the increasing costs of cars and competing at the top level. The attraction of alternative overseas championships for car manufacturers meant the writing was on the wall for the British Championship events.