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Genesis: how Super Touring came to life

The two-litre touring car regulations started as a simple concept in Britain, but rapidly spread around the world, attracting many of the major manufacturers and thousands of fans. But whose idea was it? GARY WATKINS asks the category's main players to find out

Gary Watkins Aug 13, 2013, 8:04 PM

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It is arguably the most important British export in motorsport history. What started as the 'two-litre touring car formula', conceived to breathe new life into the British Touring Car Championship, spread around the globe as Class 2 and then Super Touring.

Yet the significance of the category goes beyond its successes through the 1990s. It remodelled the motorsport landscape.

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Author Gary Watkins

Gary Watkins has, for reasons best known to himself, devoted all his working life to covering sportscar racing. This season is his 33rd as a motorsport journalist, during which time he has reported on major long-distance events on four continents and approaching 80 24-hour races. He reckons a degree in political philosophy makes him well qualified for covering the sometimes Machiavellian world of international sportscars.

Gary, who also writes for Motor Sport, Autocourse, RACER and others, lives in Surbiton close to the former workshops of the Cooper Formula 1 team but spends more time on the road than at home for most of the year.