A few days in bed over this Christmas fighting the dreaded man-flu left me with some time on my hands to watch old JGTC and JTCC video rips, that you'll have seen creeping into our feed a little if you follow the Y62 Instagram. Inspired by this, I decided to do an exploration of one of the most exciting competitions in touring car racing, the 1995 Japanese Touring Car season. For me, there's just something irresistible about a fire-spitting monster race car that looks so close to your Dad's family sedan. These cars might be the greatest example of the old 'Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday' adage.
Supertourisme
For the uninitiated, the JTCC at this time was run under the 'Supertouring' rule set. First devised by the British Touring Car Championship in 1990, the FIA endorsed the regulations at the end of the 1992 season and they started to be adopted in various national championships across 1993 and 1994. The old group A regulations had suffered competitively through the late 80's and early 90's thanks to the successive technical dominance of the E30 M3, the Sierra Cosworth and finally the R32 GTR, so the smaller saloon chassis' and engines, as well as lower costs, mandated by the new regulations proved appealing to plenty of manufacturers. Homologated entries had to be at least 13.8ft long, with four doors and two wheel drive. Engines were restricted to 2000cc and 6 cylinders or less with natural aspiration. Almost every manufacturer had a trusty rep-mobile to fit this bill so full works entries were the standard, and the lower costs to prepare a car plus 2500 minimum public sales numbers meant the action was within reach of many privateer entries also. The recipe proved popular with fans and successful at producing exciting door-to-door racing - by 1994 the rule set was in use for over a dozen national championships. If we're being honest it probably helped the combination of family sedan plus 18's and racing slicks tends to look incredible.
Peak Touring Car
It could be argued the 1995 seasons represented a high point for super-touring. Some liberal interpretation of the rules by the Alfa Romeo works team during the 1994 BTCC had lead the FIA to relax some of the rules around additional aero devices for the 95 season. This would spark the familiar automotive arms race between works teams that would lead to the eventual decline of the rule set by 1998 thanks to spiraling entry costs. The general public at large would be the overall winners of this battle though as the engineering advancements driven by supertouring cars found their way through to production vehicles, particularly in suspension and damping technology. Supertouring's strict rules around power outputs and rev limits resulted in spectacular racing but for the drivers this meant carrying speed through corners was absolutely critical, so advancements in suspension set up were seen as the key to victory by many teams. The quest for high rpm torque also lead to furious research around the most efficient solutions for engine gas-flow - the heads and manifolds on some of these engines are absolute works of art, in the purest function-over-form sense.
The grid for the 1995 Japanese Touring Car Championship, however, was as interesting as it is varied, and the aero tricks hadn't got too out of hand just yet. Indeed 1995 would become noteworthy as the sole time the title was conquered by both a non-Japanese team and driver in the form of Steve Soper and the Team Schnitzer BMW E36 318i.
Personally, I think there's something almost intangibly cool about a Japanese prepped race-car (especially European built ones). Form comes second to function in a racing vehicle, but the Japanese have a unique way of making sure it's done with plenty of style still. A few of my other favourite entries to the 1995 season;
1995 saw the works prepared Honda cars continue with the Civic Ferio base chassis but switching from the traditional B18 engine to a H22 derived block in search of more torque. Although the Civic was a good base car, it had started to be disadvantaged at the hands of bigger chassis, more stable at speed entries, even when driven by the great Dori-King himself. Honda would have to wait until the following year for success with a new car based around the bigger CD chassis Accord. I love the look of these Civic's though, some really iconic liveries here - the 5Zigen one goes especially hard.
The 95 season would see the Nissan Nismo works team once again enter the Sunny chassis but privateers Hoshino Racing and Hasemi Sport would continue to use the P10 Primera based cars with partial support from the factory. Precious little technical information seems to exist on these cars in English print so I'm unsure how much of the early development work done by the likes of Janspeed and then RML with Nissan Europe, went into building these chassis by the Japanese factory. Just shy of 300bhp from an 8.5k SR20DE sounds insane though. Honourable mention to the wheels these cars are running too - can we bring back race teams leading wheel development please?
Information is scarce on the better known entries these days - never mind the likes of privateers or even this Mazdaspeed entered pairing. The Lantis (or 323 as it was marketed in Europe) was once a fairly common site on British roads, although it is perhaps only with its absence that I've grown to appreciate its design properly.
While I'm not overly familiar with the Asian market Familia (see what I did there?) both cars certainly look awesome, although the 1995 season would prove poor for the low budget Mazda team in the face of competition from much bigger manufacturers.
The 1995 season would see several privateers campaigning the E36 chassis BMW as well as the Schnitzer works team, with varying specifications. Some continued to use the older spec S14 engine, whilst others switched to the new for 1995 S42 block. There's definitely something to be said for the often plainer privateer entry liveries too, the cars look even closer to their road going roots.
The BMW's weren't the only left field ex-works European entries that year as they were joined by the now semi works and still competitive, former BTCC Vauxhall turned Opel HKS car and several other Vectra (Cavalier) based privateers, and even a lone former Ford BTCC Mondeo chassis.
Now it would be impossible to discuss 90's touring cars, especially in Japan, without mentioning Toyota. The Aichi based manufacturer has always had an impressive commitment to motorsport as both a development program and marketing strategy, and so knew how to maximise the benefits of this approach. As keen appreciators of car culture, the Japanese public has long had an affinity for cars able to establish racing pedigree so Toyota sought to cultivate this by homologating a surprising array of its early 90's model range. Indeed between 2 works backed teams fielding Corona Exiv chassis' and a host of privateers running AE100/110 Corollas and Coronas, Toyota would absolutely dominate the 1995 grid. This approach would, ironically, lead to the eventual downfall of the JTCC by the 1998 season as all other manufacturers withdrew, leaving Toyota to race themselves amongst much lower budget private teams.
In the late 80's Toyota had seen considerable success in the US IMSA series with its Eagle prototype, built and developed by Dan Gurney's AAR. The 503E engine AAR constructed was incredibly versatile, so much so that the architecture would be adopted into a wealth of Toyota's production cars through out the 80s and 90s in the form of the 3S block. Indeed much of Toyota's approach to racing in the mid 90s was seemingly guided by the principle of wedging modified versions of the 503E motor into the required chassis for the discipline. The JTCC was no different; the cars were powered by a naturally aspirated version known as the 3SGE that produced approximately 300bhp with a redline of 8.5k.
The opening rounds of the season would see the works Toyota teams off to a strong start, taking victory in all races at Fuji, Sugo and Tokachi. A costly spin in the closing laps of the opening round at Fuji had left Steve Soper languishing in 10th place, and it wasn't until the final race of Round 4 at Suzuka that he was able to convert the BMW's obvious pace into a race victory. By the time the competition returned to Fuji for the final round, the season had turned into something of a two horse race between Soper, who had finished competitively throughout each round despite not winning many races overall, and defending '94 champion Masanori Sekiya in the works Toyota Corona Exiv. Sekiya's retirement in the first race of the final round, and Soper's subsequent victory in the second race gave the Team Schnitzer driver the edge on points, and Soper became the first, and only foreign driver to win a Japanese Touring Car title. This would also be the first time a foreign manufactured car had won the championship.
To celebrate one of our favourite seasons of motorsport, we've released a limited edition shirt paying homage to the 1995 JTCC season calendar and the iconic circuits it took place at. Head over to the store here to pick it up. If you've come this far, here's a little reward - Enter code 'JTCC95' at check out for 10% off all store products (excludes wheels & aero).
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