Favourite Touring Car

[motorsportnerd]

In a similar vein to the "my favourite Group B car", nominate your favourite touring car from any current or past catagory (eg: Super Touring, Group A, Group 2, V8 Supercar, DTM, etc). Attach photos where possible. Note: NOT JGTC cars - they're GT cars.

Its a hard choice, what with Falcon BAs, Ford Sierra RS500, Ford Carpi RS3100, Mercedes 190E Evo 2 etc, but mine has to be the ulimate Group A car, the Nissan Skyline GTR.

And, yes Falc, I know you hated them, but some of else who saw them in action remember how awesome they were.

[fpv_gtho]

im sure Falc saw this coming a mile away, but definately the BA Falcon V8 Supercar. One of the most dominant Ford V8 Supercars ever produced, couple with the up and rising Ambrose. Ford won 9 of 13 rounds last year and 6 of those round wins went to Ambrose, with another 2 of them going to Ambrose's team mate

[the real deal]

The best touring car has to be the Opel Calibra ITC car driven by Manuel Reuter (dont no if spelt right) ive seen it in action at Goodwood in 2003 and it is quick as anything on the track today. would give the new vectra GTS DTM a run for its money!

[the real deal]

Originally Posted by fpv_gtho

im sure Falc saw this coming a mile away, but definately the BA Falcon V8 Supercar. One of the most dominant Ford V8 Supercars ever produced, couple with the up and rising Ambrose. Ford won 9 of 13 rounds last year and 6 of those round wins went to Ambrose, with another 2 of them going to Ambrose's team mate

Sorry m8. i agree that the car was fantastic last year. but did you see the results from the first race of this year? Race 1 winner: Holden. Race 2 winner: Holden. Race 3 winner: Holden. a clean sweep of the weekend. Not bad for a team owned by GM!

(picture of the HRT team not of winning car)

[henk4]

This is a hard question, as I have to cover about 40 years of actively watching touring cars, and of course you got the best memories of the ones that you saw when younger.
So here are a few: The Mini Cooper 1300S, audibly fighting understeer (pictured is a rallye version but they are amazing on track)
The Shelby Cobra 350GT, very fast on the straights, but most of the time needing the whole straight to brake on time for the next corner,
The BMW Batmobile, which dominated the first half of the 1970's. (The picture shows a non-original replica)
There are more, such as the Alfa GTA, the Lotus Cortina and the Abarth 1000 TCR, also the Jaguar MkII and even the Ford Galaxie 500.

[byronleehk]

My favoriate has always been the M3 GTR, M3, 320i & the 318is from BTCC, ETCC, DTM & ALMS.

The road version costs $229,000.

[Mustang]

i like all of the DTM or V8 supercars, think that id go for the V8 falcon though.

[fpv_gtho]

Originally Posted by the real deal

Sorry m8. i agree that the car was fantastic last year. but did you see the results from the first race of this year? Race 1 winner: Holden. Race 2 winner: Holden. Race 3 winner: Holden. a clean sweep of the weekend. Not bad for a team owned by GM!

(picture of the HRT team not of winning car)

Well since the rules state that manufacturers cant own teams competing, its technically not teams owned by GM winning. FPR are fully run by Prodrive and HRT were fully under the control of TWR. The Melbourne track is better suited to the aero package on the Commodore's so thats why the top 10 was dominated by Holdens. That race also was a non championship round and simply just a support round for the Formula one, so all the teams were only going at around 80%. Jason Bright did manage to take a clean sweep of the weekends racing, but both he and Marcos Ambrose in my books were the fastest over the course of the weekend. over the course of 10 laps in the final race Ambrose made a fine comback by climbing 19 places, although would it have been a championship round, not only would the race had been longer but people wouldn't have given up the road without a little push and shove

[the real deal]

Originally Posted by fpv_gtho

Well since the rules state that manufacturers cant own teams competing, its technically not teams owned by GM winning. FPR are fully run by Prodrive and HRT were fully under the control of TWR. The Melbourne track is better suited to the aero package on the Commodore's so thats why the top 10 was dominated by Holdens. That race also was a non championship round and simply just a support round for the Formula one, so all the teams were only going at around 80%. Jason Bright did manage to take a clean sweep of the weekends racing, but both he and Marcos Ambrose in my books were the fastest over the course of the weekend. over the course of 10 laps in the final race Ambrose made a fine comback by climbing 19 places, although would it have been a championship round, not only would the race had been longer but people wouldn't have given up the road without a little push and shove

i agree with you on that one. but it must be a kick in balls that neither of the cars are run by Australian teams. TWR or Tom Walkinshaw Racing. thats a british outfit. And Prodrive. Well thats just probably the most successful british racing team that we have. seen the Subaru WRC last year and even this year in mexico. the second day was dominated by subaru. Then theres BAR, and the most importaint car that Prodrive has made in my opinion, the Ferrari 550 maranello GTS class winner at LeMans in 2003 and the most dominant car in the FIA Gt series in 2003! And of course the new Ford Falcon V8.
Up the Brits!

[fpv_gtho]

Well all the money is in the British outfits. 888 Race Engineering and Prodrive have some of the biggest cheque books in Motorsport and the former TWR would still be around, had it not gone crazy funding the Arrows F1 team. The British aren't that bad a choice though when you look into it. With their experience in BTCC and DTM, WRC and F1 they certainly know when theyre wasting money and when they aren't. Still though we aren't without high budget locally owned V8 Supercar teams. SBR are probably the best team in the country on an engineering basis, and if not that then at least for a Ford team they are. Perkins Engineering, Garry Rogers Motorsport and Dick Johnson Motorsport are all top quality teams with hardly a shortage of money and have recently been converting money into results on the track. HRT are in the mix there but i dont know whether they've settled down after losing TWR. You would say that they would, but Mark Skaife taking the budren of being the top driver for the team as well as team owner is sure to give way somewhere, be it in his driving or in his business skills, he may be just using this season to get used to a full season of owning the team.

[the real deal]

I agree with everything that you have just said there but. you have to admit that without the input that Prodrive have put into the Ford cars it would still be a Holden cleen sweep as it was in 2002. and the Opel Calibra ITC is still the best Touring Car.

17-20

[fpv_gtho]

Well in total from last yeras season, Ford took 9 round wins form 13. only 1 of those Round wins for Ford were actually to the Prodrive owned FPR, the other 8 all went to SBR. Alot of people say that pre2003 its been Holden dominance, but the opinion of the racers is just its been an HRT dominance, and that its not just the Ford teams not been able to preak their dominance at many tracks. Given that and Greg Murphy finishing higher than Mark Skaife, had Ford of failde to win last year, HRT still wouldn't have won so i think their dominance is clearly broken

[Falcon500]

Well I saw the skylines but the main reason was the group A rules favored high technology and small engines so that wasnt exactly fair on the local competition...there was no titt for tatt that groupC had...
as for my i loved the group C era all cars had strenghts and weaknesses so the flacon or holden which won the season usually struggled at say winton raceway for example....To be honest i wouldent say i have anyparticular faveorites there are a few i like and no modern v8 supercars are there....the catigory is too controlled...i like the raceing and all but i would rather something that are turly production based...
I would of added a raceing holden torana but i dont actually have a pic of one.....

[Coventrysucks]

My favorite is the car that represents the absolute pinnacle of Touring car technology, the Class 1 Mercedes Benz C klasse DTM.

Introduced in 1994, it incorperated many features from F1.
A 2.5 litre V6, mounted very low behind the front axles, which revved to 12000 rpm, producing 500bhp at 11500rpm, and 300nm torque.
Transmission was through a six speed sequential 'box, driving the rear wheels through a sophisticated tracion control, which allowed the Mercedes to keep ahead of its 4wd opponents, even in the wet.
The lightweight chassis with extensive use of carbonfibre weighed a paltry 1052kg, giving the car a top speed of 200mph.
The car also adopted F1 style active suspension, and Bosch racing ABS systems.
Competing against the 4 wheel drive Alfa Romeo 155 and Opel Calibra, Bernd Schneider took the car to two DTM championships in 1994, and 1995, before moving on to the ITC in 1996.
Unfortunately due to the huge expenditure by the teams the Class 1 championships were cancelled for 1997, but Mercedes put their knowledge into the highly sucessful CLK GTR

Please excuse the pic of a model, but I haven't found any decent pics of it around,

[Mustang]

a DTM pic