Sundays, Murrary Walker, Neal, Plato dare I go on?! Arguably the super touring era was when the British Touring Car Championship was at its peak. What made it so special you may ask?
It’s Origins
The Super Touring cars were required to be a minimum of 4.20 metres (13.8 ft) in length, with four doors, effectively requiring a small family saloon car as a minimum. No more than 2 litres engine capacity, or six cylinders were permitted, and the engine was required to be naturally aspirated. Thus a new era was born in the BTCC.
Manufactures such as BMW, Ford, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota and Vauxhall all wanted to get involved into the action which as the years progressed Audi, Peugeot and even Alfa Romero was participating in the BTCC.
“Oh, look at it! It looks like a scene from the Sound of Music!”
Charlie Cox’s commentary on John Bintcliffe’s Audi A4 at Donnington 1998
It’s Star Power
And even F1 drivers such as Nigel Mansell, Mark Blundell & Gabriele Tarquini all participated by the mid 90’s. The BTCC was delivering star power on and off the track heck even the Williams F1 team had a partnership with Renault at that time. But most importantly off all the racing was breath taking to watch.
Wheel to wheel racing, pit stop strategies, crashes it was like F1 but on a smaller and competitive stage in local British circuits and minor the cost of your average weekly wage packet back in the day it brought an audience of all ages to watch either live or on tv.
The Downfall
It seemed at that time nothing could stop the super touring but taking from a lyric from a O’Jays song “for a small piece of paper it carries a lot of weight” and sadly money talks. All the manufacturers doing that time was spending millions to get ahead of their rivals.
In 1990, a Vauxhall Cavalier cost £60,000. By the later part of the 90’s, a similar car with more sophisticated aerodynamics device and telemetry cost £250,000. In 1999 Renault reportedly spent £10 million pounds in developing their laguna salon car.
By 2000 regulations changed to make the sport more cost effective with the Super 2000 class and by that time only 3 manufactures stayed in the BTCC at that point them being Ford, Vauxhall and Honda.
The rest of the teams staying as privateers or when to other sporting events like DTM, World Touring Cars etc. This marked the end of the Super Touring Era.
Stick around as I’ll be looking into what happened after the Supertouring class and how did the BTCC fared during it reformat of the sport and looking into its future.
