TOP OF THE TOURING CAR CLASS
The Team Toyota GB name has an on-off history in the British Touring Car Championship, and its most successful period came during the 1980s.
The Corolla took championship honours overall in 1982 with Win Percy in the Hughes of Beaconsfield-backed machine, but it really hit its stride when Chris Hodgetts managed back-to-back crowns in 1986 and ’87.
He had finished as runner-up in 1985 at the wheel of a Brooklyn Motorsport Ford Escort RS1600I to Andy Rouse in his Ford Sierra XR4TI, but then Hodgetts had an unexpected visitor.
“I had driven with Toyota earlier in the 1980s, but a representative came back to me at the end of ’85 and asked if I would be prepared to build up a new Toyota Corolla AE86 for the British Touring Car Championship,” he remembers.
“It would run in the smallest class, Class D, and they would give me £35,000 for the year all in. At that time, in the days of restricted imports and things, there were no Toyota factories based in the United Kingdom either. It was a very different operation to the way things will operate now.”
Hodgetts’s car was a frontrunner in the class immediately and was only beaten on one occasion over the course of the nine rounds. He headed Richard Longman’s Ford Escort RS Turbo (from a class above) in the points.
Things got even better for Hodgetts in 1987 and he prevailed once again, picking up the title while the top-class Ford Sierra Cosworths and Rover Vitesses split the wins between them.
“We were given £70,000 for the second season because we were the reigning champions,” remembers Hodgetts. “It was a great time and a great little car. It was a privilege to be backed by Team Toyota GB, but it certainly made a lot of other drivers on the grid jealous…”