The Supercars category in Australia faces a problem which is entirely the result of its own creation. Broadly speaking the current formula for 5L V8 powered cars, results from the long tail of decisions made not quite thirty years ago. The Supercars are a Group 3A category which is basically the last refuge of the international FIA Group A category for touring cars, except that this particular appendix was designed for the then 5L V8 Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon which regular people drove. Since then, the progressive tumble of falling real wages, the SUVification of everything, the deliberate collapse of the Australian motor industry by the Liberal Party, and the consequent spiralling upwards of performance car prices now means that there are no motor manufacturers who want to play by the 1993 rules anymore. Ford want to campaign their Mustang, Holden no longer exists, and the part time travelers of Volvo, Nissan, and Mercedes-Benz have all been and gone.
The place that we've been left in where no players want to play by the old rules, has meant that the so-called Gen-3 set of rules is having to be made on the fly; to suit two door coupes, which run a 5.0L V8 and a 6.2L V8. If that isn't a recipe for parity calamity then run my nose in the dirt and call me 'stinky'.
But once again, as someone who has absolutely zero authority change anything, that makes me eminently qualified to pontificate about a subject which I know very little about. As I know diddly-squat about the engineering challenges or about the mechanical trickery needed to make anything work, I am the perfect impartial and objective observer.
If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then I would suggest... building Falcons and Monaros.
The category currently sits atop a common floorpan, it has a common gearbox, it has a common wiring loom, and it has a common spool drive. Since the cars are now dimensionally identical, then if what lies underneath the skin can be standardised, then the sheet metal which sits on top should also be standardised.
The thing which NASCAR has taught us for many years is that provided the light clusters at the front and rear and the grille and brightwork looks like the road car, then the entire of the car between the front and rear, including the glass house and everything contained between the A-Pillar and C-Pillar, can be pretty much anything. The Toyota Camry which races in the NASCAR Cup Series is a 6.0L V8, despite the fact that there has never been a road going V8 Camry. It is perfectly fine.
In Australia, we've been fine in the past with the idea that the Volvo S60, Mercedes-Benz E63, and Nissan Altima were 5L V8 cars on the racetrack despite there never being road going variants like that; we've also been fine with the ZB Commodore and the S550 Mustang being stretched and narrowed like taffy to fit the dimensions of the AU Falcon, which is what the current set of dimensions are ultimately based around.
I have seen funny car dragsters which bear only a passing resemblance to an HZ Monaro, '57 Chevy Bel-Air, '59 Studebaker, late model race cars which only have the front grille and headlights as a sticker on the front, and it's perfectly fine.
All that being said, if it has been consistently proven that what lies beneath the skin doesn't matter and everything between the front and rear of the car ultimately doesn't matter either, then the only thing which does matter is the story which the bodywork conveys. To that end, provided that Ford and GM are fine with race cars looking like long discontinued products, then I don't see any reason why the Supercars category shouldn't run Falcons and Monaros.
If you have complete control over the packaging of a thing from the outset, which is what Gen-3 affords Supercars to have, then you don't really have to worry about taking the existing panels off of a road car and stretching them like taffy to make them conform to the design requirements. They could be bespoke bits of kit.
The S550 Mustang does look a bit of a gumby but it needn't have done so. As the NASCAR Mustang proves, it could have been made to look pretty reasonable, if the pretense of it having to look like a road car was done away with. By selecting the Falcon and Monaro, which were already two door coupes, the category could mine the memories of the past, to refresh the dreams of the present.
I am even willing to say that if an unbranded engine was made available, which is currently the case in the British Touring Car Championship, then there might be interest from other manufacturers who would be willing to throw money at the sport.
Yes, the series would bear no relation to what's on the road but considering that you can't buy the Supercars Mustang and can't even buy a Commodore at all any more and more than likely won't be able to buy a Camaro in future either, what's the difference?
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