Friday 28th November 2014

European Touring Cars 1986: Time For Tea?

The entire '86 season, reviewed and recorded for your afternoon (and probably weekend) viewing pleasure

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In there amongst the cats, the 'singers' and the iPhone 6 bend tests on YouTube there are some fantastic car videos. Actually, there are enough terrible automotive films too but, on occasion, you stumble across a true gem.

This is one of them. It's the season review of the 1986 European Touring Car Championship and it is, in a word, brilliant. The upload appears to be from a VHS but the quality is OK. Yes, it's 90 minutes long but that just gives you the excuse to watch it over the weekend too. Fortunately the uploader has posted links to each race in the description so if you are pushed for time you can select your favourite few minutes. But you will want to watch all of it.

Look at the cars first: Bastos Rover SD1s, Sierras, M635 CSi BMWs, guest Holden appearances and Volvo 240 Turbos. And that's just Class A. The circuits read like a 'best of' from throughout Europe, the championship visiting Spa, Monza, Silverstone, the Nurburgring, Brno and Estoril in a 14-round season. Half an hour could have probably been spent reviewing each round.

Anyway, it's everything you might expect. There are old touring cars in iconic liveries, legendary drivers, noise, oversteer, controversy and some great tin-top racing throughout. I won't reveal the championship winner here as I don't actually know and want to watch the whole thing over the weekend.

Enjoy!

[Pic: LAT]

[GrumpyTwig]

Dear Volvo, please start doing cool things again.

[daytona365]

Dear BMW, please start doing cool things again.

[43034]

Dear Rover, please start doing things again.

[grumpy52]

Must scratch the itch to build a volvo 240 sleeper .
Who's got a 960 manual gearbox going spare ?

[dinkel]

43034 said:

Dear Rover, please start doing things again.

[sef535]

43034 said:

Dear Rover, please start doing things again.

Couldnt agree more best touring car era such a great mixture of cars even better than the early 90s (just) !!

[soad]

An hour and half long? Wonder how many cups of espresso I'll go through in that time.
Will watch it this evening.

[B'stard Child]

GM Please do something like this......

Oh Holden are going to stop producing cars
Vauxhall don't make anything RWD (Badge swapped imported Holdens don't count - see previous point) so no point expecting them to do anything like this
Opel - see above

Bugger.....

[Ahonen]

Great days. I have the VHS of this season (though it wasn't me who uploaded it) and I was at the British races.

Those were the days when I really enjoyed touring car racing. The ETCC was brilliant - so many different shapes and sounds and they were proper endurance races.

[E24man]

They weren't M635CSi's - they were all 635CSi's.

[Leins]

E24man said:

They weren't M635CSi's - they were all 635CSi's.

Any idea why that was the case? Surely the 24v unit was the correct engine to use for motorsport

[Coatesy351]

Leins said:

E24man said:

They weren't M635CSi's - they were all 635CSi's.

Any idea why that was the case? Surely the 24v unit was the correct engine to use for motorsport

Not enough built to homologate the car for group A

[Leins]

Coatesy351 said:

Not enough built to homologate the car for group A

Aha, forgot about that. Pity they couldn't sneak it as an "evolution"

[Housey]

It was a fantastic era and I was at the UK races (Donington and Silverstone) and have this video from back in the day. Such great racing and don't tell me race cars don't influence buying decisions. My dad went Capri 2.8i, Vitesse and T5R

[pSynrg]

Damn it. I can't watch this at the mo, I seem to have misplaced my rose tinted specs, unlike everyone else here

[chrisemersons]

Proof if any were needed that the super tourer days weren't the best era for touring cars - this was a great era.......

[coppice]

But the great British public far prefers the crashfest pantomime of rubbish sounding and ugly cars that comprises the BTCC 2014 style. Saw plenty of ETC and similar stuff in 80's and it was terrific . But tiny crowds in the main. Power of TV innit ...

[pSyCoSiS]

Those cars sound amazing.

Lovely to see the 80s bruisers in their glory days.

Real racing by real men!

[feef]

Soooo much run-off at Brno

[Ahonen]

Coatesy351 said:

Leins said:

E24man said:

They weren't M635CSi's - they were all 635CSi's.

Any idea why that was the case? Surely the 24v unit was the correct engine to use for motorsport

Not enough built to homologate the car for group A

I thought they managed to homologate the 24v M88 for '86 (they certainly gained a little extra power), which is why the 635s had a renaissance after they were considered to be a bit of a spent force in '85. I may be mistaken though as I was only 13 at the time.