RE: It's a racing car for the road! PH Blog
Discussion
I think you mean - Race car for the Garage.
It's tremendous that these vehicles are being built, but let's make no mistake - they aren't ever going to be driven. At least with the Group N Subaru's and other similar cars they were "enjoyed" by the general public if you knew the right time and place to observe.
It's tremendous that these vehicles are being built, but let's make no mistake - they aren't ever going to be driven. At least with the Group N Subaru's and other similar cars they were "enjoyed" by the general public if you knew the right time and place to observe.
Tickle said:
Group B Cars to like this lot...
Even thought the homologation cars are very close to the actual competition cars mechanically, there is still the recurring theme with the group Bs that the road cars almost always not only had less power but indeed : nothing like the power output of the racing cars. Doesn't invalidate them to the context of the thread IMHO, but certainly worth a mention as there are quite a lot of potential candidates where the engine is very close between racing and road cars yet the rest of the car generally isn't. Then also there are cars based around competition derived engines which have no actual racing relations (like the Carrera GT and F50, both of whose power plants actually began life as F1 projects).Ultimately though, my answer to the thread is the F40.
I would've thought that all generations of M3 were at least closely related to their racing equivalents.
I'm pretty sure the e92 M3's engine had racing applications, and that the chassis for most, if not all the M3 were used in one form of racing or another. Maybe not DTM where the original was conceived, but in other race series. There has been an increasing amount of bloat with successive generations' road cars, for sure.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
I'm pretty sure the e92 M3's engine had racing applications, and that the chassis for most, if not all the M3 were used in one form of racing or another. Maybe not DTM where the original was conceived, but in other race series. There has been an increasing amount of bloat with successive generations' road cars, for sure.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Agree with the post about the Porsche GT1 and Mercedes CLK GTR. The McLaren F1 was both the best and worst thing ever to happen to that category of GT racing, since the F1's dominance forced manufacturers down the route of designing pure racecars first, and then making a few ridiculously expensive and impractical 'road legal' cars to satisfy the regulations. At least the F1 and Ferrari F40 were intended primarily as road cars, unlike the likes of the Nissan R390.
I've spent most of the last 14 years commuting in either a DC2 or (more recently) an FD2. Not quite as extreme as some, but in ethos fairly close to the article...and the DC2 was (at least in part) a homolgation special anyway.
DC2 definitely the closer by spec (and it was a successful Group-N racer) - no NVH soundproofing at all, lighter/thinner glass, stiffened shell, motorsport-spec engine (hand-ported at the factory, titanium oval-profile valve springs, etc. etc. etc.), ultra-light wheels, a/c as an option, ultra-short ratio gearbox and more
...but the FD2 feels the more hardcore to drive, bizarrely (stiffer ride, even less slack everywhere, more immediate chassis responses)...especially as it's got no competition heritage at all...so is a 'pretender' in the context of the article.
DC2 definitely the closer by spec (and it was a successful Group-N racer) - no NVH soundproofing at all, lighter/thinner glass, stiffened shell, motorsport-spec engine (hand-ported at the factory, titanium oval-profile valve springs, etc. etc. etc.), ultra-light wheels, a/c as an option, ultra-short ratio gearbox and more
...but the FD2 feels the more hardcore to drive, bizarrely (stiffer ride, even less slack everywhere, more immediate chassis responses)...especially as it's got no competition heritage at all...so is a 'pretender' in the context of the article.
DiscoColin said:
Ultimately though, my answer to the thread is the F40.
Except that the F40 was designed only as a road car:"As early as 1984, the Maranello factory had begun development of an evolution model of the 288 GTO intended to compete against the Porsche 959 in FIA Group B. However, when the FIA brought an end to the Group B category for the 1986 season, Enzo Ferrari was left with five 288 GTO Evoluzione development cars, and no series in which to campaign them. Enzo's desire to leave a legacy in his final supercar allowed the Evoluzione program to be further developed to produce a car exclusively for road use.[13] In response to the quite simple, but very expensive car with relatively little out of the ordinary being called a "cynical money-making exercise" aimed at speculators, a figure from the Ferrari marketing department was quoted as saying "We wanted it to be very fast, sporting in the extreme and Spartan," "Customers had been saying our cars were becoming too plush and comfortable." "The F40 is for the most enthusiastic of our owners who want nothing but sheer performance. It isn't a laboratory for the future, as the 959 is. It is not Star Wars. And it wasn't created because Porsche built the 959. It would have happened anyway."
After it was produced and sold as road car I believe customers decided to take it racing. However, not quite the same as the cars that were only sold as road cars so that it could be raced.
Esceptico said:
Except that the F40 was designed only as a road car:
...
After it was produced and sold as road car I believe customers decided to take it racing. However, not quite the same as the cars that were only sold as road cars so that it could be raced.
Maybe not designed as such, but in hardware/specification terms, it was very close....
After it was produced and sold as road car I believe customers decided to take it racing. However, not quite the same as the cars that were only sold as road cars so that it could be raced.
Esceptico said:
However, not quite the same as the cars that were only sold as road cars so that it could be raced.
Sold yes but originally designed for Group B purposes as per the article you posted. They were only sold as road cars because Group B was dropped in the interim it would seem.
I suppose there are quite a number of cars similar to their racing equivalents by virtue of the fact that some racing series have very deliberate rules to allow few changes to standard road cars to keep costs in control. Quite a few rally classes like that. Don't really think these count though.
Actual race cars on the road are almost certainly horrible. When I bought one of my Westfields it had been used as an instructing car for a track event company and so was track biased but very much road legal. It had a straight cut box and rose jointed suspension with no compliance whatsoever. It was genuinely horrible on the road when I first bought it. The noise a straight cut box makes is utterly offensive and rose jointed suspension with sticky tyres meant the car followed every tiny deviation on the road. It was constantly fighting you. It was fun for a quick blast but totally exhausting. And that was only nodding towards a track car. A full on race car would doubtless be worse. People say that an S1 Elise was a raw car, but that felt like a Maybach after that Westfield.
Actual race cars on the road are almost certainly horrible. When I bought one of my Westfields it had been used as an instructing car for a track event company and so was track biased but very much road legal. It had a straight cut box and rose jointed suspension with no compliance whatsoever. It was genuinely horrible on the road when I first bought it. The noise a straight cut box makes is utterly offensive and rose jointed suspension with sticky tyres meant the car followed every tiny deviation on the road. It was constantly fighting you. It was fun for a quick blast but totally exhausting. And that was only nodding towards a track car. A full on race car would doubtless be worse. People say that an S1 Elise was a raw car, but that felt like a Maybach after that Westfield.
arkenphel said:
I would've thought that all generations of M3 were at least closely related to their racing equivalents.
I'm pretty sure the e92 M3's engine had racing applications, and that the chassis for most, if not all the M3 were used in one form of racing or another. Maybe not DTM where the original was conceived, but in other race series. There has been an increasing amount of bloat with successive generations' road cars, for sure.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
The E30 M3 was. I'm pretty sure the e92 M3's engine had racing applications, and that the chassis for most, if not all the M3 were used in one form of racing or another. Maybe not DTM where the original was conceived, but in other race series. There has been an increasing amount of bloat with successive generations' road cars, for sure.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
The E36 wasn't though - while there have of course been people kicking them around in VLN and suchlike, the most noteworthy E36 racing programmes were basically confined to the 4 cylinder SuperTourer and not the M3 (IIRC there was a falling out with the DTM about how far back they could move the engine and they took away their toys and abandoned the series rather than campaign the E36 M3). Americans might contest this as PTG ran them in IMSA with some degree of success but that wasn't a factory programme nor did generate any major international attention.
This continued with the E46 3 series, however there was also a full fat E46 M3 competition car : the M3 GTR. However - that had a 500hp 4 litre V8 and the only road M3 of that vintage so equipped was limited to a handful of homologation cars at something crazy like a quarter of a million Euros. The normal E46 M3 and CSL : related only in shell and trim.
With the E92 there was also a major racing programme - the M3 GT2 (which campaigned Le Mans and the N24). However, the engine in that was actually an evolution of the racing motor from the E46 GTR and is completely different to the S65 in the road cars. They did also make a few S65 based GT4 spec E92s which showed up in the VLN and presumably elsewhere, but those to my mind are little more than a footnote in the story.
Basically road M3s (aside from that handful of E46 GTRs) stopped being homologation competition cars after the E30. A few people used them as a base for building a racing car, but people have done that with 1 series diesels too so it isn't completely relevant if given context.
Awesome cars (of which I am an unashamed fan), but the motorsport link is really all marketing rather than ancestry after the E30.
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