Sound plays a crucial part in the enjoyment of motorsport. Just ask any F1 fan who enjoyed the V8 or V10 era.
But I don’t just mean volume, tone or pitch. At the 2024 Classic & Modern Touring Car Festival held at Mallory Park, the Classic Touring Car Racing Club (CTCRC) races made me realise that the diversity of sounds is arguably the most important.
Historic touring car racing is well known for being some of the most exciting motor racing, and part of its appeal is the sheer range of cars that have competed in it over the years.
Of course, it wasn’t always historic racing. The British Saloon Car Championship was established in 1958 by none other than Stirling Moss’s manager, Ken Gregory, as a way for ‘modern’ production cars to compete in an established race series.
Over the decades, the sport evolved, and its popularity grew amongst fans, drivers and manufacturers alike, leading to legendary eras such as Group 5, Group A and Super Tourers.
The late 1960s were arguably the most diverse years of touring car racing in the UK, with cars ranging in size and category from classic Mini Coopers to Porsche 911s to American beasts such as the Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Falcons in the 1967 season.
It’s not just the type of car that was diverse, but the scope of the drivers, too. Formula 1 stars, including Jacky Ickx and Graham Hill, rubbed shoulders with amateur racers in touring cars, leading to a mix of crowds and classes rarely seen in motorsports these days.
One distinct feature of early touring car racing was the structure, wherein different classes would compete for the same overall championship win while simultaneously racing on the same track.
This meant that although you weren’t necessarily racing your Austin A40 against the Chevrolet Impala ahead of you, so long as you were leading your class but the Impala driver wasn’t leading theirs, you would get more championship points.
A point of contention for drivers over the years, as the upper classes became increasingly popular, it naturally became tougher for larger-engined entrants to win the championship. In fact, 84% of championship winners in the two-class days of British Touring Cars competed in the lower cubic capacity category.
As the 1970s led to stricter homologation rules, the class system underwent a few more changes until settling on an upper limit of 3,500cc in 1980. This meant goodbye for the American-built monsters and was a chance for European-built Ford Capris, Alfa Romeo GTVs and SD1 Rover Vitesses.
The 1980s are arguably the most iconic period of touring car racing globally, especially towards the end of the decade as Group A became the accepted vehicle standard. Ford Sierra RSs and BMW M3s dominated, taking the top podium spots from Toyota Corollas and Ford Escort RS Turbos in the UK. Meanwhile, DTM was hotting up for iconic battles with Mercedes 190 E 2.3-16s in the mix.
1991 was the start of the BTCC’s most advanced era of racing – Super Tourers – with a standardised 2,000cc format and budgets going through the roof. Chaydon did a fantastic job bringing the golden era of BTCC to our pages last year, so check out his article for an in-depth dive into the series.
Today, under the ‘Next Generation Touring Car’ format, we still have a mix of FWD and RWD entrants and a wide range of manufacturers. However, shared crash structures and common engines have somewhat dulled the variety once experienced in the sport.
The racing is still intense, with door-to-door action and drivers going bumper to bumper at every meeting, but, as is the way with a lot of motorsports, the need to bring the pack closer together and cap costs has taken priority over all else.
The 2024 Classic & Modern Touring Car Festival was a day of experiencing legitimate race cars of yesteryear and ‘new’ cars built to period-correct spec. This opened my eyes to the beauty that variety can give motorsport. Silhouette racers and the Super Saloon format provide the opportunity to witness a mix of eras and types of cars. However, the competitive nature can have some devastating results.
Watching a Ford Falcon leave a Mini Cooper S in its dust along the longest sections of the track with its thundering V8 reverberating around Mallory Park’s hills, only to have the plucky Mini out-brake it and carry immense speed (by comparison) through the bends is an experience I wish for all motorsport fans to have one day.
Or to witness Lotus Cortinas, with their twin-cam engines screaming on a fast downhill left whilst being chased by tiny Ford Anglia 105Es and 998cc Hillman Imps with a front wheel in the air.
My favourite battle of the day was between Stephen Primett in his Mk1 Ford Escort and Jonathan Corker in a beautiful Datsun 510. I don’t think they were ever separated by more than a second from the off, with only 0.25 seconds between them as they crossed the finish line.
Primett took the race on the Saturday that I was there, whilst Corker won with a commanding lead in Sunday’s race.
Race weekends in championships such as the CTCRC are fantastic because they allow spectators to not only see their favourite classic cars being sent around the track in anger but also because they get to experience what made motorsport so special for enthusiasts in the generations before us.
Part of that experience is the sound, and I’ll be damned if there is a better-sounding race series than what the Classic Touring Car Racing Club puts on these days.
Mario Christou
Instagram: mcwpn
mariochristou.world