Five road cars that are really for the racetrack
Monday, 4 March 2019
Homologation specials are cars manufacturers make in limited numbers when they need a road-going version of a racing car to comply with the race series' rules. As a result, there are some wonderfully mental 'road' cars built to justify the racing cars - here are our five favourites.
BMW M1
BMW built the M1 specifically so it could go racing and beat Porsche in Group 5 racing. It had to be mid-engined and it had to be fast, something BMW could handle.
It also had to have 400 road going models for homologation, something that BMW couldn't handle at the time, so it entered into an arrangement with Lamborghini to build the road cars.
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Unfortunately, Lamborghini was quite financially wobbly at the time and BMW had to end up building the road cars.
This delay caused BMW to miss out on Group 5 when the rules changed, so the M1 was only ever raced in Group 4. However, it was the first road-going M-badged car, so for that reason alone it was worth it.
Ferrari 250 GTO
To homologate the 250 GTO for racing, Ferrari was supposed to build 100 road-going versions. But Enzo Ferrari had no intention of doing that.
Instead, the company built 39 road versions with big gaps between their chassis numbers to give the illusion that it had built 100. They would then shift the 39 cars around different locations to continue the illusion for the FIA inspectors.
While it seems like the plot from a comedy movie, it worked and the 250 GTO was massively successful on the racing scene, remaining one of the last truly competitive front engined cars well into the emergence of mid-engined racers.
As an added bonus of Ferrari's deception, the 250 GTO is now one of the most valuable cars in the world.
Ford RS200
Following Ford's spectacular failure to develop a RWD Group B rally car from the Escort, it was left without challenger for the series.
As a result it lashed together a quick, yet spectacular response - the RS200.
It was a clean-sheet design based on nothing in the Ford line up, featured a fibreglass body designed by Ghia and built by - wait for it - Reliant (yep, the manufacturer of weird little three-wheelers!) and had an incredibly complex drivetrain that saw the power go from the engine in the middle up to the wheels and transmission at the front (for weight distribution), and then back to the rear wheels.
Ford built 200 road going cars, with a number of them having been converted into rally cars since.
Peugeot 205 Turbo 16
Nowhere is is the gloriousness of Group B madness more blatantly on show than in Peugeot's homologation special for its 205 T16 rally car - the Peugeot 205 Turbo 16.
Again 200 road going versions had to be built, which shouldn't have been a problem, seeing as it was based on the FWD 205. Except that it shared almost literally nothing with the standard 205.
While the 205 was FWD with a traditional transversely mounted front engined layout, the T16 was mid-engined and AWD.
So Peugeot simply built 220 rally cars (200 for homologation and 20 for the rally teams) that looked similar (the massively flared rear arches were a dead giveaway), but were totally different to the standard 205.
Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR
When it came time for Mercedes-Benz to homologate its magnificent CLK GTR it almost took the Enzo Ferrari approach - it simply promised to make the 25 required.
However, this time around the FIA was a bit wiser to this sort of thing and forced them to make them - even after the category it competed in had been dropped!
Ironically, the GT1 category was dropped from the GT Championship for the 1999 season because the GTR had been so dominant other manufacturers and teams simply stopped entering.
Mercedes modified the CLK GTR into the CLK LM to take on Le Mans (and, as it turned out, get airborne in the process), but a grand total of 20 road going coupes were built, along with six ultra-rare roadsters.