Off-the-wall tin-tops
Touring Car racing in all its many forms has existed for aeons.
It was formally adopted in 1958 with the arrival of the British Saloon Car Championship; since then, tin-tops have at times flourished across Europe and beyond, but also foundered – and often due to outside forces pressing in (global recessions, the occasional Fuel Crisis, that sort of thing).
What is clear, though, is that some entrants, builders and racers went their own way by fielding cars that may not have been the most obvious choice of circuit weaponry.
Gathered here are 10 of our favourites. Some blazed trails only to then get burned, while there were those that were foiled before they were halfway out of the workshop.
Others, meanwhile, would clearly never amount to much, and then there were those that were but marketing exercises.
Here we stick to vehicles that made at least one start and competed in a mainstream championship or event.
And, for full disclosure, one of our picks isn’t even strictly a car…
1. AMC Spirit AMX
Detroit muscle and European saloon-car racing were once intertwined.
However, AMC was rarely represented on track, which made the arrival of the Spirit AMX all the more unexpected.
Team Highball built a brace of Group One cars for a tilt at the 1979 Nürburgring 24 Hours, with the likes of actor James Brolin on the driving roster.
The net result was two finishes (25th and 43rd), class honours and a legion of new fans.
British racer Jeremy Nightingale completed the homologation for the North Carolina team’s bid, and it didn’t end there.
Nightingale entered a Spirit AMX in that year’s RAC Tourist Trophy encounter (pictured).
The race at Silverstone was a round of the European Touring Car Championship, the saloon-car stalwart being joined by Team Highball founder Amos Johnson and Les Delano. They didn’t go the distance.
Anorak fact Nightingale started racing aboard a self-built Hillman Imp. His friend, a pre-fame James Hunt, also campaigned it in 1970, albeit only once
2. Peugeot 806
It may have been a PR stunt, but this racing MPV showed real promise during its sole outing.
Built to contest the 1995 Spa 24 Hours, the 806 Procar was conceived internally but prepared by Jean-Pierre Mondron’s Kronos Racing squad, which ran the local importer’s race programme.
Even so, the team had barely a season under its belt when it set about creating this unlikely endurance racer to Belgian national Procar regulations.
The 806 employed the running gear from a 405 Mi16 Supertourisme and the engine from a 306 Maxi tuned to produce 280bhp.
Running in the Class II Super Touring category, the 806 Procar lined up 12th in a field of 53 starters, and the all-Belgian driver trio of Philip Verellen, Pascal Witmeur and Éric Bachelart put on a show in the race.
This square-rigged device was often on two wheels, but sadly it dropped out with a cooked engine at three-quarters distance.
Anorak fact The 806 Procar was offered at auction in 2022 minus engine and ’box but didn’t sell
3. Mercedes-Benz 300SEL 6.8
The precise backstory behind the creation of AMG’s Rote Sau (Red Sow) is mired in conjecture; it rather depends on whose version of history you believe.
This unlikely European Touring Car Championship racer was reputedly built around the remains of a crashed Mercedes-Benz 300SEL, using a new bodyshell.
The big news was the engine: the 6.3-litre V8 received a displacement hike to 6.8 litres, with power increased from the usual 250bhp to a more useful 428bhp.
There was factory support, even if it was of the back-door variety (there had been previous 300SEL racers, as devised by Erich Waxenberger).
To save weight, the bumpers were removed and the glazing swapped for Plexiglas. The doors were also aluminium-skinned.
All told, 130kg (287lb) was saved, even if the car’s ready-to-race 1635kg (3605lb) ensured it was no lightweight.
The highlight of a patchy competition career was a class win and second overall in the 1971 Spa 24 Hours.
As an aside, the Red Sow wasn’t always red: it was painted yellow for two events.
Anorak fact Remarkably, a Mercedes-Benz 600 Grosser was also raced. Adrian Hamilton doorhandled his father Duncan’s standard road car at Thruxton in 1971
4. Lada 110/Priora
Lada and circuit racing weren’t mutually exclusive: witness Satra Motors’ involvement in ProdSaloons during the 1970s.
However, the marque moved up to the big leagues in 2008 when Russian Bears Motorsport entered a brace of 110s in the World Touring Car Championship for Viktor Shapovalov and Jaap van Lagen (Kirill Ladygin was also on the driver roster, a third car being fielded later in the season). The squad scored no points.
A year later the team gained manufacturer status as Lada Sport and scored a coup by signing James Thompson.
The British Touring Car Championship star dovetailed his multi-series programme with six outings in the new Priora model, and he racked up two sixth-place finishes at the Imola round.
Lada withdrew from the WTCC at the end of the season.
Anorak fact Lada returned in 2012, with Rob Huff claiming the marque’s maiden win in Beijing two years later, driving a Granta 1.6T
5. Chevrolet Impala
The urge to say ‘I told you so’ must have been almost overwhelming; nobody thought it stood a chance.
Top-flight Touring Car – or rather, saloon car – racing in the early 1960s was the preserve of Jaguar and Jaguar alone.
Except somebody forgot to tell Dan Gurney, who had seemingly rocked up for the 1961 International Trophy support race at Silverstone with only his tow car.
But no, this was his entry. A Chevrolet Impala 409? Really? After the race, nobody was laughing, least of all Gurney.
A wheel had parted company, but not before he had stormed away with the lead from pole, leaving a trail of Jaguars in his wake.
Obviously someone in Coventry read the writing on the wall, because Gurney never got to race the self-financed Impala again: the Chevy was denied an entry for July’s Empire Trophy meeting.
‘Handsome Dan’ even fired off a missive to Autosport, railing: ‘I will, in time, get over the fact that I spent a lot of time and money bringing the Impala to Great Britain, but I will not readily forget the suspicion that there may have been some behind-the-scenes sabotage to prevent the Chevrolet running again.’
Anorak fact Charlie Kelsey and Peter Sachs occasionally beat up on Jaguars in 1962 with their 327cu in Chevy IIs
6. Volvo 850 estate
The BTCC during the Super Touring era was a thing of wonder, with multi-marque grids and big-name drivers aplenty.
But perhaps the most memorable car to compete during the ’90s was also the most improbable.
Volvo had form in tin-tops – witness the 240 Turbo, which, thanks to a masterstroke of homologation chicanery, starred in the European Touring Car Cup (Gianfranco Brancatelli/Thomas Lindström shared the 1985 driver spoils).
TWR, which fielded the Rovers vanquished by the Eggenberger Motorsport Volvos, took charge of the marque’s on-track return, the 850 estate being famously adopted for the ‘Volvo Back on Track’ bid in 1994.
At the time, much was made of the estate outline being adopted because it was more aerodynamic than the saloon, but in reality the decision was marketing-led.
Rickard Rydell claimed in later years that he had no idea that he would be racing an estate car when he signed to drive in the BTCC, the single-seater exile having been paired with TWR old boy Jan Lammers.
While the Volvos didn’t finish higher than fifth that season, they accrued masses of publicity in the mainstream press, which meant that the exercise had been a partial success.
Saloons were adopted thereafter, though, with Rydell claiming the 1998 title aboard an S40.
Anorak fact Rumours persist that two of the four cars were scrapped, but somehow they all survive, if not necessarily in period spec
7. Tatra T2-603
Scroll back to a time before the previous Cold War thawed and you rarely saw a car from Eastern Europe competing in an international motorsport event; rarer still was a team heading back behind the Iron Curtain with the silverware.
Nevertheless, this did happen, as evinced by the works Tatra squad’s smash-and-grab raid on the 1965 Marathon de la Route.
This gruelling event was staged at the Nürburgring and encompassed the Nord and Südschleife sections, and it lasted for a patience-bothering 84 hours.
The mighty T2s, with their swing-axles and air-cooled V8s slung out back, were paragons of consistency, the Czech machine of Stanislav Hajdušek and Adolf Veřmiřovský finishing ninth overall and victor in the GT class.
Tellingly, little was made of their success in the British motorsport media at the time.
Anorak fact Tatra returned to Germany 12 months later and bagged a 1-2-3 win in the up-to-2.5-litre class, along with the team prize
8. Ford Fiesta
The appearance of a Ford Fiesta in the Tricentrol British Saloon Car Championship in 1980 wasn’t a great surprise, but why a US-spec car?
Richard Longman (on right) had claimed the title in 1978-’79 with Mini 1275GTs, but a hat-trick wasn’t on the cards given the amount of ballast the Minis would have to carry. He chose to go with Ford.
Teammate Alan Curnow would run a 1.3-litre car, while Longman opted for the 1.6 class – but such a model wasn’t yet homologated in the UK.
He decided to race a US-spec edition, which proved gutless, but he accrued points through consistency and took second in class in the British Grand Prix support race at Brands Hatch.
Longman learned of the result in the back of an ambulance – the race was red-flagged after he was caught in a multi-car shunt.
Anorak fact The following season Longman turned his attentions to the Austin Metro
9. Honda N600
This entertaining Japanese tiddler wasn’t a natural tin-top racer, but the class divide in Production Saloons in 1972 meant that it was one of few cars eligible for the sub-£600 category.
While Tony Lanfranchi ran away and hid for most of the season in his Moskvich (more on which on the next slide), the Yorkshireman endured a rare defeat at Mallory Park at the hands of Bill Sydenham’s N600.
The future champion won in the wet to record the Japanese marque’s sole victory.
Sydenham also loaned his car to Wendy Markey for her first-ever race that same year.
She went on to campaign everything from Ladas to Chevrons.
Anorak fact Martin Thomas, better known for taming Mustangs, Camaros and other heavy metal in the British Saloon Car Championship, also braved an N600 in period (above)
10. Moskvich 412
Tony Lanfranchi always was a canny sort.
Back in the early 1970s, production saloon car championships were divided into four classes along the lines of retail cost rather than engine capacity.
As such, the cheap-as-chips Moskvich 412 had the largest displacement in its category – and by a significant margin.
Lanfranchi approached the UK concessionaire, Satra Motors, with a view to backing his bid in the Castrol and Britax championships.
He subsequently received a free car. Modifications were limited to blueprinting the engine, plus the addition of a rollcage and other safety equipment.
Lanfranchi was virtually unchallenged in 1972, comfortably annexing both titles.
A year later, he dovetailed outings in a Moskvich and a BMW 3.0 Si, and remained a contender, but no titles were forthcoming.
Further 412s continued to be campaigned by other drivers thereafter, Le Mans veteran Peter Jopp being among their number.
Anorak fact Lanfranchi also used his 1972 Moskvich as daily transport, racking up 17,000 miles in it that same year
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