Wales Rally GB was the most recent iteration of the United Kingdom's premier international motor rally, which ran under various names since the first event held in 1932. It was consistently a round of the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) calendar from the inaugural 1973 season until the rally's final running in 2019, and was also frequently included in the British Rally Championship.

The first rallies in the 1930s were simply known as Royal Automobile Club (RAC) Rallies and did not necessarily require leaving England. In 1951 the club organised the first annual RAC International Rally of Great Britain to tour the island, and until the 53rd event in 1997 this was still commonly known as the RAC Rally. In 1998, amidst a restructuring of the club and its commercial activities, the event lost its RAC identity and became known as the Rally of Great Britain or Rally GB, with title sponsorship from the Government of Wales since 2003.

The last planned Wales Rally GB was cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Welsh Government withdrew sponsorship support. Attempts were made to replace it with a Rally UK or Rally Northern Ireland, held entirely in Northern Ireland, however no such event has run as of April 2024^[update].

The inaugural event was the 1932 Royal Automobile Club Rally, which was the first major rally of the modern era in Great Britain. Of the 367 crews entered, 341 competitors in unmodified cars started from nine different towns and cities (London, Bath, Norwich, Leamington, Buxton, Harrogate, Liverpool, Newcastle upon Tyne and Edinburgh.)

The Official Programme explained:

Different routes are followed from the nine starting points, each approximately 1,000 miles (1,600 km) long, but all finishing at Torquay. On every route there are four controls in addition to the starting and finishing controls, and these are open for periods varying from seven to four hours. Competitors may report at these controls at any time during the hours of opening. ... At the final control they must check in as near their fixed finishing time as possible, and any considerable deviation from this time results in loss of marks.

Completing the routes held no other competitive element other than following them within the time schedules, which were deliberately made easy by the RAC so that everybody made it to Torquay. However, competitors performed tests at the finish in Torquay, involving slow running, acceleration and braking. There was no official winner declared, although Colonel A. H. Loughborough in a Lanchester 15/18 was recorded as having the fewest penalty points in the decisive tests at the finish. He completed the 100-yard slow driving test at an average speed of 0.66 mph (1.06 km/h), which was found to be less punishing under the scoring system than Donald Healey found by being fastest in the 100-yard (91 m) acceleration test, completing it in 7.6 seconds.

The following year's RAC Rally followed a similar format, but with Hastings as the chosen finish. Over three hundred competitors entered, and this time Miss Kitty Brunell, driving an AC four-seater sports, was the driver with the fewest penalties. Over the next few years the rallies finished at various towns including Brighton and Blackpool. The rally was run annually until 1939, after which the outbreak of the Second World War forced its suspension.