This is the weekend of the Bathurst 1000 motor race and it will be 30 years since Jim Richard's now famous infamous speech from the podium in which he told the baying crowd what he thought of them after they had told him what they though of him, following his and Mark Skaife's win in the Nissan GTR R32. There was nothing wrong with the Nissan GTR R32; far from it. It was the best car to make use of the regulations; it's just that the very parochial crowd was annoyed that it had won everything and particularly on the day, it was declared the winner of the Bathurst 1000, after torrential rain had come down, after it had crashed into a wall, and the results were taken from two laps before. The crowd was miffed that a crashed car could win the race. However, that race win sits in a broader story.
By 1992 touring car racing had gotten way out of hand. The international category of FIA Group A Touring Cars had produced a bunch of homologation specials, which had become hideously expensive and ever since TWR had smashed all and sundry with their Jaguar XJR, Volvo with their 240T terror taxi, Ford with their Sierra Cosworth, there had been an arms race. Nissan was the last to step into the fray with their R32 Skyline GTR, after they'd carefully looked at the rules and produced an 2.6L turbo in-line 6, with four-wheel-drive, to go out and conquer the world.
Conquer, it did. It conquered everything to such an extent that it broke touring car racing in Europe and Australia and Japan. Germany had already killed off turbocharging by the time that it entered, Britain has adopted a smaller class; that left the Spa 24 Hours, the Bathurst 24 and the Suzuka 8 Hours as the available places to play. The 1992 Bathurst 1000 was the second last place that the Nissan GTR played in Australia and it won that edition in somewhat controversial circumstances.
The theory behind Group A was that you could take a road car and provided that 5000 examples of the standard road car had been build and 500 'evolution' examples had been built, then you could take what was in spirit as a normal road car and turn it into a racecar. Also, as Group A regulations were kind of the same for both road course and rally work, then in theory you could take a road car and put it in a rally and vice versa. In practice, this was only ever done with cars like the BMW M3, Ford Sierra Cosworth and smaller cars like the Toyota Corolla and Opel Astra.
If you draw the long line across time from the former FIA Group 2, through FIA Group A (and v8supercars which are an extension of Group 3A), then the place where you end up now is likely FIA GT3 and/or GT4 in Europe.
I have previously wondered what would have would have played with the Nissan GTR had the regulations stayed the same for 1993 and 1994 but in 2022, as the 5L V8 Group 3A regulations finally come to a close and the last of the Holden Commodores finally goes round, my thoughts turn to wondering about what we would have had in 2022 had Group A racing continued.
This is a series of speculations:
Nissan:
GTR - as a stand alone machine, I expect that they would have run the V6 2997cc turbocharged version. The 1.4x tariff for turbocharging kicks that up to 4195cc and that means that it would have been running at 1370kg; which given the march of technology would have been about where it was in 1992.
Nissan eventually spun the GTR out of the normal Skyline lineup and it is now a stand-alone sports car in its own right and has been for some time. The GTR currently does go racing in GT3 classes around the world; which is why I suspect that had Group A survived, it still would have been the weapon of choice.
Ford:
Ford has not one but two options which might be sensible.
Mustang - There aint no substitute for cubic inches and the 4951cc Coyote V8 Mustang is the obvious choice. In that trim, the car would be carrying 1470kg. If however the car ran the 5163cc Voodoo V8, it would be kicked up to 1560kg and likely not competitive at all.
The S650 Mustang is bigger than the Falcon, the Sierra, and the Foxbody Mustang which fared poorly in the mid 1980s. Bigness is both the blessing and the curse of this car; which makes it stable but unwieldy.
Puma - The other option would be the Ford Puma. The 1497cc turbocharged Ecoboost Dragon I-3, kicks it to 2096cc. That would be carrying a tiny 1030kg; which means that the Puma in Group A trim would basically be a wee little rocket bunny.
Chevrolet:
Camaro - The Chevrolet Camaro has a 6162cc LT4 V8. Curiously as the car is already in the highest weight class, then a supercharged variant which kicks it out to 8626cc equivalent, means that it still would only be weighted at 1650kg. This is easily the heaviest car of the bunch but if we're talking about octoton horsepower, then 1650kg might not be an issue.
General Motors do not really sell cars outside of North America very much any more. Having shut down Holden because the Australian Government removed the subsidies and having sold off the Vauxhall/Opel Group, they didn't really see the point in making cars to comply with either Euro 6 emissions standards or Right-Hand-Drive cars.
Australian motor racing organisers would fall over themselves in trying to get the General to play in Australia as that is useful from a marketing perspective.
BMW:
Both the M2 and M3 run the 2993cc turbocharged I-6 engine. At an equivalvent of 4190cc this means that they'd be running at 1370kg. I have no way to predict what BMW what choose to run and it would probably come down what they wanted to market at the time but I would think that the M2 as a smaller car would be a better idea in principle.
In general, BMW have always been semi-ambivalent about going motor racing. As a luxury brand, they often appears to wax and wane with their support.
Mazda:
Demonstrably the perfect formula for Group A racing was a 2L-3L turbocharged engined car, to take advantage of the weight adjustment. Mazda have in their Mazda 6 a 2488cc turbo V6, which equates to 3483cc under the rules and would carry 1200kg. A twin-turbo V6 could be made to scream its head off and at only 1200kg, Mazda's return to the mountain would have been amazing.
Toyota:
I think it unlikely that Toyota would choose to run their GT-86 or Supra and the 3.5L Camry would carry too much weight to be competitive. This means that Toyota would have one real arrow in their quiver. The Toyota Corolla GR Gazoo with its 1618cc turbo I-4 would be rated to 2265cc and also run to 1030kg.
Honda:
Honda might very well be tempted to run their Civic Type-R which in its current ilk of 1996cc turbo I-4 works out to 2794cc as rated and would carry 1150kg. Presumably a Group A Civic would take componentry from the BTCC Civic; which means that they wouldn't have to develop very many new components at all.
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A theoretical Group A on paper looks pretty strong until you realise that the teams that run machinery are going to look at all of the available options and just pick the fastest. In the late 80s this was the Ford Sierra and then the Nissan GTR, or if you wanted a cheaper race car in Australia you would buy a Holden Commodore.
Therein lies the problem with the formula. It kind of already bakes in advantage to whomever can look at the rules and best exploit them. A 2022 Group A would fail for the same reason as a 1992 Group A did. A category like GT3 and GT4 attempts to equalise the field through balance of performance calculations and GT300 goes one step further with fuel restrictions. V8Supercars went the other way by clamping down and making more and more things spec components.
What's notably absent here is that apart from the Mazda 6 and depending on your definition of what the Honda Civic Type-R currently is, the rest are all coupes and hatchbacks. The market has generally moved away from sedans for the simple reason that there's more profits to be made in selling a similarly sppecificationed SUV. If a 2.5L V6 sedan can sell for $30K, then a a 2.5L V6 SUV can sell for $40K. It will sell less units but at 25% more profits, that's fine.
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