So what exactly is a touring car anyway?
Given this site is focused entirely on touring cars, it’s probably worth trying to establish a definition for what exactly constitutes a touring car. On paper that’s pretty straightforward, and indeed for many championships and sets of regulations it is. However, for others it can become significantly more frustrating.
Touring car racing as a category began to grow in popularity in the post-war period, and quickly established the rough formula for what we would easily identify as a touring car today. Often referred to as ‘saloon car racing’ in the UK, it was pretty much as the name suggested: a form of racing centred around saloon cars with fixed roofs, which was the most common body style for the everyday road cars of the era.
In the modern era meanwhile, we generally think of saloons and hatchbacks when we think of touring car racing. So can we boil the definition down to whatever the popular body styles of average cars of the time are? Well, not quite. Coupes have been extremely significant throughout the category’s history; the BMW 635CSi, Ford Falcon Sprint and Honda Integra Type-R are just three examples from different decades that are undeniably touring cars, yet are two-door coupes.
Other definitions for the category in the 60s and 70s focus more on the idea of a touring car as a vehicle with four usable seats for adults. This also makes a lot of sense, and would include most coupes. Not all of them though, and when you think about how the Porsche 911 was considered a touring car in its early years, suddenly we’re back to square one. Yes the 911 had back seats, but I’m not sure the word “usable” is capable of stretching that far. It was a controversial car at the time, largely for this reason, but it was officially classified as a touring car for a while, so our definition has to try and accommodate that.
This is where we have to consider how sportscar racing intersects with touring car racing. GT racing in particular has often found itself tangled up with touring car racing throughout history, and trying to define the differences between these is a whole other problem in itself. We’ve established that hatchbacks and saloons are definitely touring cars, and any mid-engined exotic or roadster is going to fall under the sportscar category. How do we split coupes though? Some are touring cars, while others are sportscars.
Let’s try something slightly more abstract. A touring car needs to be a mass-produced and easily accessible model, regardless of any other traits. It needs to be a fairly regular car. As some examples, a Ford Mustang or a Toyota GR86 is a touring car, but an Aston Martin Vantage or a Maserati GranTurismo is a GT car. But even here we run into issues: like is a Toyota Supra a touring car? Well in the Group A era, yes, definitely. However its modern counterpart is used in Super GT and GT4, but not touring car racing as of yet. Again in the Group A era the Jaguar XJ-S was a plush, premium grand tourer, but it raced as a touring car.
Maybe how we define a car has to be tied to the regulations it runs to. If we establish whether a ruleset counts as a touring car series, then we can consider all the cars under those regulations to be touring cars. You’re probably sensing a theme by this point, so you can guess what comes next. Take Group 5; some of its most iconic cars are touring car legends. The Ford Capri, BMW 320i, Ford Escort MkII, and BMW 3.0 CSL can surely only be considered touring cars. However some of the other classic cars of that ruleset, such as the BMW M1, Porsche 935, and Lancia Beta Montecarlo are obviously sportscars. So what the hell does Group 5 count as? Does the championship determine the category of the cars, or do the cars dictate the category of the championship? This is getting too philosophical.
The point I’ve been trying to make here is that no matter how we attempt to define a touring car, there simply isn’t a solid concrete answer. There are always cars that would be excluded incorrectly, or cars that would be included that wouldn’t belong. Obviously there’s no correct answer for how to solve this, and realistically I can’t imagine many other people really care, but it’s down to each individual fan how they interpret things. Given this is my site though, I feel it might be worthwhile trying to explain my logic for how I decide what counts as a touring car.
For me, the best way to picture this is with a spectrum. Imagine on one end we have the most nailed-on, non-negotiable touring cars: the likes of TCR cars. On the opposite end, we have the clearest sportscars. Prototype categories; LMP1, Hypercar, DPi, etc. Anything that sits in the range from the centre to the 100% touring car end can reasonably be argued as a touring car. Right in the middle of this spectrum is where we find some of the awkward cases we’ve covered so far. The likes of Group 5, cars like the Toyota Supra. In these instances it’s largely context based whether these fall under the touring car or sportscar umbrella, but both disciplines can justifiably lay claim to them.
It's not the most satisfying conclusion to this question, and ideally a firm definition would be better. Given that isn’t possible, just going off the ‘vibes’ of a car or a championship will have to suffice. Personally, the main things I consider are the body style and where the car in question sits in the market. If it’s a convertible, a supercar, or anything premium with a limited production run, it’s probably a GT. If it’s a hatchback, saloon, SUV or pick-up, or a coupe that’s built in reasonable numbers that you might see on the road on any given day; that’s a touring car. Was that answer worth a thousand words to reach? Absolutely not. Normal service will resume shortly.
