Famous Touring Cars

[motorsportnerd]

The writers block was temporary thankfully. Fully recovered now.

[motorsportnerd]

Its time I posted the next history one one of the classic touring cars.
However, I'm spoilt for choice. So, I'm opening this up.
Which of the following cars should I post on next? I'd like to stick to Group A cars for now. General consensus in the next few days will determine which one I post on first.
1. Jaguar XJS (TWR, John Goss Group C, etc)
2. Volvo 240 Turbo (Eggenburger, RAS, etc)
3. Holden Commodore Group A racers (there were five of them - two VK versions, VL, VL TWR and VN - teams such as the Mobil Holden Dealer Team and Holden Racing Team).
4. BMW 635CSI (Schnitzer, JPS Racing, etc).
So, which car should be next?

I'll add:
5. Nissan Skyline (DR30, HR31 and the famous R31 GTR) to the list.

[nitro_2005]

aren't you forgeting the r32 as well?

[motorsportnerd]

No, I should have said R32 GTR, not R31. Apologies.

[Wireless]

Hi Guys,

Well, my first post, 30 minutes in the making completely disappeared into the ether so here goes again...! I have just registered on here after stumbling across this thread whilst Googling.

It's great to see that classic Gp.A touring cars and in particular the Sierra RS 500 has a following World wide. I gained a great appreciation and love for the car back in 1987 (aged 10) when I saw the James Hardie 1000 from Mount Panorama, Bathurst on TV here in the UK. I took an instant like to the RS 500's and have loved them ever since. I promised myself that one day I would own one...!

In April this year I acquired a mint and immaculate concours condition RS 500. Pics can be found at the website I set up at www.rs-500.com

After the excellent and informative posts by motorsportnerd, I though I would add what I could whilst making a couple of corrections - hope I don't read on anyones toes being a newbie...! Here's a bunch of random information on the RS 500...

- It's full title is the Ford Sierra RS 500 Cosworth.
- The '500' moniker stems from the fact that there were just 500 of these cars made.
- The car is not based on the XR4i shell but is infact based on the much lighter base Sierra 1.6 shell. The giveaway is the two side windows of the RS 500 and the three side windows of the XR4i.
- All the RS 500 cars were produced at the end of the production run of the regular Sierra RS Cosworths (aka "3-doors") and stored away. At this point, they were regular 3-doors but with very different chassis and engine numbers
- The RS 500's were not modified by Ford. All modifications to RS 500 specification were made by Aston Martin Tickford in the UK.
- All genuine RS 500's are right-hand-drive. There were no RS 500's made with the steering wheel on the left.
- Despite the significant modifications, the road cars were little more powerful than the regular 3-doors. 224bhp vs 204bhp.
- RS 500's were sold through specially appointed 'Ford RS' dealers.
- Only three colours were available - Black, White and Moonstone Blue.

The differences between the regular 3-door Sierra RS Cosworth and the RS 500 include but are not limited to the following... :

- Different front bumper.
- Different front splitter.
- Fog lamps replaced with grille covered brake ducts (fogs optional on RS 500).
- Larger intercooler
- Massively bigger turbocharger (Garrett T04 vs Garrett T03).
- Additional plenum and injectors (8 injectors in total).
- Modified battery tray to accommodate the above.
- Strengthened engine block.
- Different turbo damper.
- Different exhaust downpipe featuring restrictors to combat overboosting.
- Additional rear suspension pickups.
- Different rear "Whale Tail" wing (shorter and with a Gurney strip)
- Additional lower rear spoiler
- RS 500 decaling

As for the racers, the 1987 Dick Johnson cars were built from parts developed by Andy Rouse in the UK and were shipped to DJR for assembly. Andy Rouse is not only credited with developing the Sierra Cosworth programme but also built well over half of the World's racing Sierras at his workshops in Coventry, UK.

I was lucky enough to participate in the Concours competition at this years Ford RS Cowners Club day at Donington in the UK. The 25th Anniversary of the club saw a number of genuine Gp.A RS 500's take to the circuit with a number of original drivers. Foreign cars included the 1987 Rouse/Moffatt ANZ car, the 1987 Dick Johnson Shell Ultra Hi car and the 1989 Rouse/Brock Mobil1 car. I fully intend to acquire a genuine Gp.A Sierra at some point in the near future. The car will feature it's original livery and *will* be driven albeit not on the public roads of course...!

I have added some pictures below, hope you enjoy them...!

My Bathurst collection... :


My RS 500


Photos from Donington, August 2005

[forza_autodelta]

you got a beautiful car , cheers

[henk4]

Welcome to UCP and hope you like it here. Required is an open mind (accepting that there are also other cars around than the RS500) and a sense of humour.

[Wireless]

Thanks for the welcome and kind words guys...! Don't worry, I have an open mind when it comes to cars.

My dad loves the RS 500.
My mum thinks it's an 18 year old Ford driven by boy racers.
My brother thinks it's a death trap.

I tend to agree with all of them...!

I look forward to some quality banter...!

[Mustang]

My Bathurst collection... :

ive got those videos and more

THERE GREAT

love the 1992 one

[motorsportnerd]

Thanks for the info and the photos Wireless.

[motorsportnerd]

No 3. 1982-87 Jaguar XJS

When most people think of European touring car racing in the early to mid 1980s, they will think of the two big coupes from Jaguar and BMW, a streamlined four-door hatchback from Rover and a brick like three-box sedan from Volvo. The early years of the Group A formula were fought out between the Jaguar XJS, BMW 635Csi, Rover Vitesse and Volvo 242 Turbos. The racing between the four was close and hard fought, both on and off the track.
Throughout the 1983 and 1984 seasons, it was Jaguar and BMW who battled out the European Touring Car Championship. Rover stole the occasional victory and Volvo quietly developed the 242 Turbo. When the Jaguar was retired from European competition at the end of 1984, the other three manufacturers went toe to toe for the next two seasons.
The years from 1983 to 1986 marked the coming of age for touring car racing in Europe. The competition was intense, the professionalism of the championship and teams rose dramatically and manufacturer interest in touring car racing was at an all time high.
Such was the intensity of the competition that several off track court battles were fought over eligibility. Volvo tended to be at the center of these battles, but the other manufacturers were just as likely to bend the rules as far as possible to gain an advantage.

It is Jaguar which is probably the most synonymous with the early years of Group A racing. The XJS began its Group A competition life in 1982 and had its last race in New Zealand at the start of 1987. However, it was only raced in the European Touring Car Championships for three seasons, from 1982 to 1984.
During 1981, Scottish driver and team owner Tom Walkinshaw was looking for a car which would be competitive under the new FIA Group A touring car regulations for 1982. At that time his team raced Mazda RX7s in Group 1 racing in both Britain and Europe. Tom Walkinshaw and Pierre Dieudonne shared a Mazda RX7 to take victory in the 1981 Spa 24 hour race – the first time a Japanese car had won the Spa classic. Walkinshaw knew that the RX7 would be uncompetitive under the Group A regulations. It would be relegated to being a under 2,500 cc class contending car rather than an outright car. So Walkinshaw needed a new car – and after careful reading of the new regulations, he felt that the Jaguar XJS would be that car. There was another Jaguar under consideration – the XJ-Coupe V12. However, Walkinshaw decided on the XJS in favour of the XJ-C, due mainly to superior aerodynamics and also because the XJ-C had ceased production.

Walkinshaw was able to convince Jaguar to homologate the XJS for Group A racing. However, Jaguar wanted no direct involvement with the planned project. Jaguar bosses remembered an ill-fated attempt to win the 1976 European Touring Car Championship with a XJ-C V12, and had no wish to be involved in any similar failure.
Walkinshaw announced an attack on the 1982 European Touring Car Championship. The first XJS racer developed 375 bhp from its 5.3 litre V12 engines. Weighing in at 1,400 kg, this gave the car a 3.7 bhp/kg power to weight ratio.
The 1982 XJS racers were sponsored by Motul, and were presented in black paint (not the British Racing Green that fans may have hoped for). Initially, there was just a single car for Tom Walkinshaw and Pierre Dieudonne. Early rounds showed the car had speed, with fastest lap at Monza, pole and third placing at Vallelunga and pole at Mugello. However, the early part of the season was marked by a lack of reliability as TWR worked to develop the car, leaving the rival BMW 528i racers to dominate the first half of the season. The break through win came at round 6 of the championship at Brno, and the XJS was the car to beat in the second half of the championship. The next major win followed at the Nurburgring Nordschleife 6 hour race, on the classic long track.
A second car was introduced at the Spa 24 hour race and the TWR team recorded two one-two finishes (the first of many) in the last two races of the season at the Silverstone Tourist Trophy 500 and the Zolder 500.
All in all, a great start to the XJS’s race career, with Walkinshaw only just missing out on the driver’s championship.

[motorsportnerd]

For 1983, the TWR team returned to the European Touring Car Championship with Motul once again the sponsor. This time the cars were presented in a white livery. The cars now had 400 bhp on tap and a season’s development behind them. Walkinshaw mostly shared his car with Chuck Nicholson, while the second car was mostly driven by Enzo Calderari, Pierre Dieudonne and John Fitzpatrick. However, current ITV F1 commentator and former F1 racer Martin Brundle also drove both cars on occasion.
The Jaguars took five victories in 1983, and Walkinshaw finished second in the championship. However, for the second year in succession, the Jaguars failed to go the distance in the Spa 24 hour race and also couldn’t repeat their victories from the previous year at the Nurburgring and Silverstone. In fact, 1983 saw the Jaguars start the season well, but score a string of DNFs towards the end of the season which blunted Walkinshaw’s championship hopes.
For 1984, Jaguar became more involved in the team, taking official sponsorship of the TWR Jaguars. There were three Jaguars for the 1984 season, and now that Jaguar was officially sponsoring the team, they appeared in British Racing Green for the first time. The BRG Jaguar livery is how most fans will remember the cars. The cars now had a very healthy 450 bhp and still weighed in at 1,400 kgs, meaning a power to weight ratio of 3.1 bhp/kg. Driver line ups for the three cars were Tom Walkinshaw/Hans Heyer, Martin Brundle/Enzo Calderari and Win Percy/Chuck Nicholson. All three driver combinations would taste success during a year in which the TWR Jaguar team swept all before it. Walkinshaw took the drivers championship and Jaguar won the Spa 24 hour race on its third attempt. There were also two 1-2-3 results for the team, at the Enna 500 in Sicily and the Brno 500. The XJS’s won seven out of the 12 races during the year. However, despite the success of 1984, Jaguar decided to pull out of touring car racing and concentrate instead on the World Sports Car Championship – a campaign that would see Jaguar winning both the World Championship and Le Mans in the second half of the 1980s. Although TWR was to develop the new Jaguar XJR sports prototypes, the team also decided to remain in the ETCC, but switched from the XJS to the Rover Vitesses, mostly because Rover was willing to sponser the ETCC campaign (more on the Rovers later).
If TWR had chosen to campaign them, the XJS would been competitive in the 1985 and 86 ETCC, but they would have found it harder against the new turbocharged rivals from Volvo. Although the XJS’s weren’t seen racing competitively in Europe again following the end of the 1984 season, they did appear in four more races during the 1985/86 seasons.

[motorsportnerd]

The Australian Bathurst 1000 was switched from local Group C rules to the international Group A rules in 1985. Walkinshaw had always been keen to do the race with his cars and the local importer, JRA, was keen to bring the XJS to Australia to race. Walkinshaw also wanted make amends for a disastrous 1984 campaign in a locally developed Group C XJS developed by John Goss. In 1984, Walkinshaw’s race lasted about 10 seconds, as the car failed to leave the starting line and was hit from the rear.
For 1985, the TWR Jaguars would start the Bathurst 1000 as favourites. Three cars were entered, for Tom Walkinshaw/Win Percy, Armin Hahne/John Goss and Jeff Allam/Ron Dickson. Goss was a former Bathurst winner, having won there in 1974 in a Falcon.
The Jaguars dominated qualifying, with Walkinshaw on pole from Allam. The Goss/Hahne car was sixth. In the race itself, Allam’s car lasted just three laps, out with a blown engine. Walkinshaw led comfortable before encountering dramas that dropped his car back. This left local hero John Goss in the lead, a lead which he maintained to the end.
This race provides my enduring memories of the XJS. Two memories stick in the mind. The first is of Walkinshaw two-wheeling the heavy car across McPhillamy Park in the top-10 shootout for pole position. The second is of Goss struggling with a broken seat and still having to drive hard enough to keep the Peter Brock’s Commodore behind him in the closing laps. The Commodore retired with only a couple of laps to go, and Goss was able to slow down to allow the third placed Walkinshaw to catch him so that the first and third placed Jaguars crossed the line together.
The TWR team was keen on defending their Bathurst crown in 1986, but a budget couldn’t be found for the effort. That should’ve been it for the big cats. However, a New Zealand marketing firm, Strathmore Marketing, found the budget to help the TWR race two of the XJS racers in the Fuji 500 in 1986 and the two race Nissan-Mobil series at Wellington and Pukekohe in early 1987. Time had caught up the XJS by this stage though. The XJS was fast on the straights of Fuji and Walkinshaw took pole. However the cars proved unreliable and both DNFed. The tight Wellington layout didn’t suit the Jaguars and although the Armin Hahne/Denny Hulme car qualified third, once again, both Jaguars retired. The Wellington race was the last time Tom Walkinshaw drove the car. He was due to drive in the Pukekohe race, but a family emergency forced him to withdraw. So, there was just one Jaguar at Pukekohe, driven by Armin Hahne and Win Percy. The fast Pukekohe layout suited the XJS and Hahne and Percy were able to give it a fitting farewell, dueling throughout the entire race with the winning Commodore of Larry Perkins/Denny Hulme, and finishing a well deserved second.
After five years, the competition career of the XJS was over. Rule changes governing the interior dimensions of the car meant that the XJS was no longer consider to be a genuine four seater. Anyway, the XJS couldn’t have lived with the new generation cars like the Sierra RS500 and BMW M3 which burst on the scene in 1987.
The XJS is one of the most interesting touring cars ever, and one of the most successful. Just how much more successful the XJS could have been if it had contested the 1985/86 seasons, we’ll never know.

First Race: 1982 European Touring Car Championship Round 1, Monza 500, Italy
Last Major Race: 1987 Nissan Mobil 500 Round 2, Pukekohe, New Zealand

Championship Wins
1984 European Touring Car Championship for Drivers – Tom Walkinshaw

Major Race Wins
1982 ETCC, Brno 500 – Tom Walkinshaw/Pierre Dieudonne
1982 ETCC, Nurburgring Nordschleife 6 hours, Germany – Tom Walkinshaw/Pierre Dieudonne
1982 ETCC, Silverstone Tourist Trophy 500, UK – Tom Walkinshaw/Chuck Nicholson.
1982 ETCC, Zolder 500, Belgium – Tom Walkinshaw/Chuck Nicholson.
1983 ETCC, Donnington 500, UK – Martin Brundle/John Fitzpatrick/Enzo Calderari
1983 ETCC, Enna 500, Sicily, Italy – Tom Walkinshaw/Chuck Nicholson
1983 ETCC, Brno 500 – Tom Walkinshaw/Chuck Nicholson
1983 ETCC, Osterreichring 500, Austria – Tom Walkinshaw/Martin Brundle
1983 ETCC, Salzburgring 500, Austria – Tom Walkinshaw/Chuck Nicholson
1984 ETCC, Monza 500, Italy – Tom Walkinshaw/Hans Heyer
1984 ETCC, Donnington 500, UK – Win Percy/Chuck Nicholson
1984 ETCC, Enna 500, Sicily, Italy – Enzo Calderari/Martin Brundle
1984 ETCC, Brno 500 – Tom Walkinshaw/Hans Heyer
1984 ETCC, Osterreichring 500, Austria – Tom Walkinshaw/Hans Heyer
1984 ETCC, Salzburgring 500, Austria – Win Percy/Chuck Nicholson
1984 ETCC, Spa 24 hour, Belgium – Tom Walkinshaw/Hans Heyer/Win Percy
1985 Bathurst 1000, Australia – John Goss/Armin Hahne

Specs:
Engine:
5,344 cc, 2 valve/cylinder, Lucas Electronic Fuel Injection.
Power: at start of development in 1982 - 281 kW (375 bhp)@6000 rpm. At finish of development in 1987 – 338kW (450 bhp)@7,000 rpm.

Transmission: 1982 Jaguar 4-speed; 1983 on - Jaguar 5-speed.

Wheels: 11 inch wide x 17 inch diameter front /11.5 inch wide x 17 inch diameter rear

Driving Wheels: Rear.

[henk4]

The years from 1983 to 1986 marked the coming of age for touring car racing in Europe. The competition was intense, the professionalism of the championship and teams rose dramatically and manufacturer interest in touring car racing was at an all time high.

Very good stuff on the Jaguar. However I singled out this quote, because I think that touring car racing in Europe really came of age in the mid sixties, when the fierce battles between the Lotus Cortina, Alfa Romeo GTA, BMW 1800TI and the Ford Mustang took place. This also coinceded with me getting old enough to visit those races .There was a second wave of intense fighting in the early seventies with the Capris and the BMW Batmobiles.

[motorsportnerd]

That 1972-74 period with the intense battle between the Ford Capris and BMW works teams was great - especially as a number of F1 drivers drove for both BMW and Ford.
Perhaps I should replace the word "Europe" with "the World" - that period 1983-86 really did see a rise in interest in touring car racing all over the world.