The first Royal Automobile Club Rally in 1932 was the earliest major rally of the modern era in Great Britain. Of 367 crews entered, 341 competitors started from nine cities across England and Scotland, all converging on Torquay where finishing tests of slow driving, acceleration, and braking decided the results. No official winner was declared at the inaugural event. The rally was held annually until 1939, when the Second World War forced its suspension.
The post-war event resumed in 1951 as the RAC International Rally of Great Britain, an 1800-mile itinerary testing speed, hill-climbing, and regularity with a common route through Scotland, Wales, and England. An official outright winner was first declared in 1953, when Ian Appleyard in a Jaguar XK120 took the honours.
The transition from a road-touring regularity event to a competitive stage rally began in 1960, when organising secretary Jack Kemsley negotiated access to a two-mile closed gravel road in Argyll, Scotland, for a timed speed test. Swede Erik Carlsson won that year in a Saab 96, completing the course without penalty. The following year, rough gravel forestry roads across Britain were opened up, and with over 200 miles of special stages the rally's character was permanently set. Carlsson won again in 1961 and 1962, giving him three consecutive victories.
By 1965 the event featured over 400 miles of stages across 57 sections, predominantly in forests. By the mid-1970s it was one of the most spectator-attended rallies in Europe, with ticketed spectator stages at venues such as Chatsworth House bringing the competition close to large population centres while the competitive forest stages in Wales and Scotland provided the true challenge.
The 1985 event was the longest RAC Rally to date, covering 3,465 kilometres over six days with 79 hours of driving time. The 1986 RAC Rally was the final European event for Group B machinery, held months after the death of Henri Toivonen at the Tour de Corse and amid pressure to remove the category from international competition. Peugeot 205 T16 Evo 2s driven by Timo Salonen, Juha Kankkunen, and Mikael Sundström occupied three of the top four positions, with only Markku Alén's Lancia Delta S4 preventing a clean Peugeot sweep.
The RAC Rally and its successors hosted some of the most dramatic championship deciders in WRC history. In 1991, Juha Kankkunen edged Carlos Sainz to the title after Sainz suffered engine problems and went off in Kielder Forest. In 1992 the two returned with Didier Auriol for a three-way fight; Auriol's engine failed, Kankkunen damaged his steering on the final day, and Sainz won both the rally and his second championship. In 1995, an estimated two million spectators lined the forests as Scotsman Colin McRae secured his first and only world title ahead of Carlos Sainz, ultimately confirmed at Chester Racecourse. The 1998 edition produced one of the sport's most dramatic single-event reversals when championship leader Tommi Mäkinen crashed out after hitting oil, seemingly handing the title to Carlos Sainz — only for Sainz's engine to fail 300 metres from the end of the final stage, returning the championship to Mäkinen. In 2003, Petter Solberg beat Sébastien Loeb to the title by one point after Solberg won the rally itself.
The rally shed its RAC identity in 1998, becoming the Rally of Great Britain. From 2000, competitive stages were concentrated entirely in Wales and the event moved its operational base to Cardiff. The Welsh Assembly became title sponsor in 2003, cementing the Wales Rally GB branding that persisted through 2019. From 2013 the service park moved to Deeside, near Chester, with competitive stages concentrated in North Wales.
The 2005 event was shadowed by the death of co-driver Michael Park in a crash involving Markko Märtin's Peugeot on stage 15. Sébastien Loeb, who was on course to win the rally and the championship, voluntarily accepted a two-minute penalty so as not to win under those circumstances, with Petter Solberg ultimately declared the winner.
Nordic drivers dominated the event's competitive history. Home drivers won the first six championship editions, but Scandinavian competitors held a substantial overall advantage. Sébastien Ogier became the outright record holder with five victories in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018, surpassing Hannu Mikkola and Petter Solberg who each won four times.
Wales Rally GB was synonymous with wet, muddy autumnal conditions — typically held in November, rainfall was almost guaranteed, and the defining character of the event across its history was unpredictable British weather on narrow forest roads. The event's eighty-eight-year continuous presence in international motor sport before its calendar departure represented one of the longest unbroken records of any WRC round. Rally Scotland, announced as a 2027 successor, marks an attempt to restore the British round to the world championship after a six-year absence.