Rallycross is a form of sprint style automobile racing, held on a closed mixed-surface racing circuit, with modified production or specially built road cars, similar to the World Rally Cars. It is mainly popular in the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Great Britain. An inexpensive, entry level type of rallycross is the Swedish folkrace or its Norwegian counterpart, the so-called bilcross. The folkrace is most popular in Finland where it was founded back in the late 1960s. In Europe, rallycross can also refer to racing 1:8 scale off-road radio-controlled buggies. History Origins of rallycross The sport started as a TV show (with especially invited rally drivers), produced by Robert Reed of ABC Weekend TV for ITV's World of Sport programme, at Lydden Circuit (between Dover and Canterbury) in Great Britain on Saturday, 4 February 1967. The first true rallycross was organised by Bud Smith (d. 1994) and the Tunbridge Wells Centre of the 750 MC, with the aid of Lydden Circuit owner Bill Chesson (d. 1999), and was won by later Formula One driver as well as 1968 Rally Monte Carlo winner Vic Elford in a showroom Porsche 911 of the British importer AFN, ahead of Brian Melia in his Ford Lotus Cortina and Tony Fall in a BMC Mini Cooper S. After that inaugural event there were another two test rallycrosses at Lydden, on 11 March and 29 July, before the new World of Sport Rallycross Championship for the ABC TV viewers started with round one on 23 September, to be followed by round two on 7 October. The series was run over a total of six rounds (three at Lydden and three at Croft) and was eventually won by Englishman Tony Chappell (Ford Escort Twin Cam), who became the first British Rallycross champion after winning the final round of the new series on 6 April 1968 at Lydden. However, the true birth of rallycross is often wrongly connected with the cancellation of the 1967 RAC Rally, due to foot-and-mouth disease, in November 1967, about ten months after the maiden event. Some foreign entrants for the RAC had also planned to take part in the 1st international rallycross at Lydden Circuit, on Saturday, 25 November 1967, but went home immediately after the rally had been cancelled on the evening of 17 November, and was replaced by a single special stage (won by Swede Erik Carlsson in a