Welcome to the RSC Touring Car archives. Following an inclusion of top formula racing cars into RSC website in the early 2005, we decided to cover also a golden period of touring car racing within the Racing Sports Cars website. European Touring Car Championship, which was officially held from 1970 until 1988, had its better moments as well as some rather weak years but generally it was an interesting series, which brought a lot of exciting endurance racing dramas and battles. Our original intention was to start with the 1970 season because it was the first year of the official European Championship but since we were kindly provided with photos from some earlier events, we now show also some races that preceeded the official championship and that were part of the European Touring Car Challenge, which was modestly started in 1963.
The championship was held until 1988, a year after an experiment to convert it into the World Championship series in 1987. The new rules required entrance fee to be allowed for scoring championship points. It appeared to be a decision that finally led to poor race entry lists and loss of interest among many private teams. It simply did not work for the championship. The former diversity of the field was gone. Apart from the largest Division 3, where just Fords were competitive though, the rest of the field was almost plain, formed by BMW M3s in Division 2 and by Toyota Corollas in Division 1.