Touring Car Tales

[Falcon787B]

Evening all,

I've recently been getting back into the world of touring cars in a big way, remembering the days when I was younger and I would sit wide-eyed and watch the British Touring Car Championship, in it's 90s heyday. So with that in mind, I decided to really explore GT2's plethora of potential touring cars, and see what exciting races and unusual heroes I could create with these unusual legends of the race track.

This thread is your chance to share cars, setups, and experiances with any touring cars in GT2, be it races in the Super Touring Trophy, races where you've used a Touring Car in another class/catagory (example: my attempt at the Special Stage Route 5 enduro in an Audi S4), and other such things. I remember being inspired in the early days of my time on this site by A.A.Z's story of defeating the SSR5 enduro in an Alfa Romeo 156 touring car - stories like this and others will be much welcome.

I'll be sharing my own stories, as I attempt to find close races, as well as staging some fictional 'Touring Car All-Stars' events using the Super Touring Car Trophy events as a starting point. I may also be starting up a Touring Car themed time trial challenge event if there is enough interest

Note: My definition of 'touring car' in GT2 is any large, 4-door saloon car with racing modifications on. For example, all the cars seen in the Super Touring Trophy (Renault Laguna, Vauxhall Vectra, Honda Accord, Nissan Primera, etc) are in this catagory, as well as stuff like the Audi A4, Ford Mondeo, and even bigger things like the Toyota Aristo, etc.

 

[jeffgoddin]

Sharing your enthusiasm for the touring car concept! The BTCC was similar to the JTCC in its supertouring phase, like 93-98, when the Exiv dominated.

Clearly GT2 deliberately offers a very deep pool of touring cars. The king in my opinion may be the Alfa 155 touring car with 4WD and like 13000rpms, just crazy fast and great handling and historic as well. But if you're looking at the Super Touring races, shoot for 3.84kg/hp, or 312hp at 1200kg for example, or even less hp honestly, on medium slicks, for some good competition.

As far as FF's go it's hard to beat the turbo tuned 156... For 4WD (regular production cars, setting the 155 touring car aside for a moment) the S4 rules as you've guessed, and is likely the best sedan in the game. The Chaser TRD Sports X30 will be hard on the S4's heels, though, impressive for a FR vs 4WD especially since the S4 has a few more years of technology in it.

Also consider that there are usually up to three classes, 1.6L and below, between 1.6L and 2.5L, and 2.5L and up.

Wagons were raced some years when rules made it aerodynamically favorable.

 

[Parnelli Bone]

Would the Super Touring Series be most similar to the real-life BTCC then? Like are all the cars which appear (as Ai) BTCC? Or is there some sort of a mixture between BTCC and some other series?

 

[Smart_Roadster]

Touring Car Racing's Gone Downhill.
BTCC: No works manufacturers
DTM: Lost Alfa
WTCC: Reduced to Chevy (Korean one, not proper US one), BMW and SEAT.

 

[karelpipa]

Would the Super Touring Series be most similar to the real-life BTCC then? Like are all the cars which appear (as Ai) BTCC? Or is there some sort of a mixture between BTCC and some other series?

i think that BTCC dominated, but JTCC was AI too.

Supertouring rules were same for all world. But year or two later (2000), manufacturers pulled off BTCC (dont know what other touring series, but BTCC was biggest of all then) championship, because it was too expensive and that meant the end of supertouring rules.
more reading about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertouring , but its kind of a sad reading.

Miss those cars, as you can se in my signature.