FIVE MORE GREAT BTCC CARS
VAUXHALL CAVALIER
At the start of its career it took on the standard-setting BMW M3 and at the end it was fighting off hordes of foreign invaders. In between the front-wheel-drive Cavalier took 19 points-paying wins and helped make John Cleland a star of the BTCC.
The early Dave Cook Engineering cars couldn’t quite topple BMW in the drivers’ championship, although the result of 1992 might have been different had it not been for the infamous Steve Soper-cleland clash at the Silverstone finale.
RML subsequently took over the Cavalier programme and in 1995 Cleland used the bewinged version to defeat works efforts from Alfa Romeo, BMW, Ford, Honda, Peugeot, Renault, Toyota and Volvo to take his second drivers’ title.
The Vectra replaced it for the following season.
ALFA ROMEO 155
Unlike most of the cars on this list, the 155 only had one year in the sun before it was swiftly surpassed during the intense battles of the Super Touring era, but it brought about a change that is still evident in touring car racing today.
When the Italian works operation arrived in 1994, its 155 sported a front splitter and a rear wing thanks to some clever interpretations of the homologation regulations. Rival teams didn’t like it but the rulemakers allowed the arrival of downforce, even though they did tweak the regs slightly. The immediate results were the drivers’ title for Gabriele Tarquini and manufacturer laurels for Alfa.
The longer-term impact was that aero became one of the key areas of touring car development, improving lap times at the expense of the racing.
FORD MONDEO
The Mondeo makes this list largely for being the ultimate car of the BTCC’S greatest era, Super Touring, though the 1998-99 Nissan Primera could also make a reasonable claim to that honour.
The Prodrive-built V6 Mondeo dominated the 2000 season, with Ford reputedly spending £10 million to finish 1-2-3 thanks to Alain Menu, Anthony Reid and Rickard Rydell. Such excess for a domestic tin-top series helps explain why Super Touring imploded, but the last cars of the era were absolute engineering gems.
In its various forms, the Mondeo was a BTCC regular after it arrived in 1993.
The original Andy Rouse Engineering-built cars were winners, Paul Radisich finishing third in the drivers’ table and winning the World Touring Car Cup in ’93 and ’94, but there were some also some uncompetitive versions before Prodrive hit the jackpot in 2000.
VAUXHALL ASTRA COUPE
Vauxhall was one of the first to commit to the low-cost Btc-touring rules that replaced Super Touring and, given a blank sheet of paper, it created a car that would go on to dominate for four seasons. The Astra Coupe was the class of the field – so much as that the works Triple Eight team was asked to run the cars at 90 per cent throttle to allow for some competition on the grid.
Jason Plato, James Thompson and Yvan Muller were the masters of the British machine and took four crowns between them. Between 2001 and ’04, the two-litre four-cylinder Astra took 62 wins from 96 races.
HONDA CIVIC
Next Generation Touring Cars arrived in the BTCC in 2011 and took over the following season. The concept of spec parts to keep costs down has certainly been a success, with bulging grids and narrow title fights almost every year.
Despite the fact that underneath, the cars are similar, some teams have proved more successful than others. Chief among these is the ninth-generation FK2 Honda Civic, thanks to its excellent aerodynamics.
Since its introduction in 2012, the Civic – in hatchback, Tourer (nee estate) and Type R forms – has won 61 races and four drivers’ titles with works ace Gordon Shedden and Eurotech star Andrew Jordan.