Homoligation

[Jordan]

What exactly does homoligation mean, anyway?

 

[Talentless]

I think it refers to the manufacturer having to produce x amount of production models to be a qualifiable participant in production vehicle based racing series; may be a different amount for each series. I doubt it would apply to F1.

 

[Jordan]

Ohh, I see.  That's why you don't see any special cars rallying in the WRC.  And that would also explain the GT/GTS categories of the 24 hours of Le Mans and the American Le Mans Series.

 

[Phil]

Talentless has got it 100% right but to add to his post, some homoligation rules state that both the road car and the car entered for competition have to share either certain components or share similar technical designs or layout. For example, Prodrive make and maintain the Subaru WRC's have built a Ferrari 550 for the FIA GT Championship. When the car went through scruteneering at Silverstone last weekend, they found that certain aspects of the transmission layout was different to the road 550 and they weren't allowed to race. The basic idea behind homoligation is to keep the cost of designing and producing competition cars down.
I don't know if all of that makes sense to everyone but I think I got most of it down.

 

[Jordan]

Yeah, I think I remember seeing the article on Prodrive's Ferrari on PistonHeads a while back.  Very impressive car, I would certainly like to see it do well.  I hadn't thought about the cost of the cars and homoligation, but I understand where that would be a big issue.  I just thought it was so that people would be able to relate to the cars, and own them (if they can afford it, of course )