So, to beguin with the portuguese RS500, they debuted in Portugal in early 1988 to the Portuguese Touring Car Championship.
Two cars were bought from England to Traffic Racing (Ni Amorim) and Gianfranco (Carlos Rodrigues). There was a third car for António Rodrigues (Carlos' brother) but all the media stated that it was his previous year RS Cosworth car converted to RS500. Could this be true or reasonable? The rear spoiler was in fact of RS500 type, but it was possible to convert a RS into a RS500?
If so, then there were two true RS500 and a "converted RS" in this first year.
To cut the story short, Ni Amorim almost won the championship which went to Pequepe's BMW M3, Carlos Rodrigues finaly won championship races, and his brother had so much problems with the "converted car", that he switched to his older Volvo 240 Turbo to finish the championship.
Some fotos of the cars
The António Rodrigues car followed by the Traffic one
http://img406.imageshack.us/my.php?i...adoconduj8.jpg
http://img406.imageshack.us/my.php?i...rampadahb5.jpg
The Carlos Rodrigues car
http://img406.imageshack.us/my.php?i...iladocoyh9.jpg
(all came from this site)
http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=263800&page=8
1989
The Traffic car was bought by Promogrupo (which was Amorim's sponsor in his 1988 Group N car) and was used by Amorim to win the championship.
The Rodrigues brothers went together in Gianfranco Team using their previous year cars. But Carlos was punished with a 6 months ban after punshing another racer in the first race of the championship, and the "converted car" was set asside as the problems continue, and António used instead the true RS500 until his brother's return.
Anothe car appeared: a Luigi RS500 driven by Christian Melville, without much sucess, and latter that year Robert Giannone also drove a RS500 but I could not find yet if is the "converted" loaned to him by Gianfranco or a new car.
This means that we have three of four true RS500, and a "converted? car".
I wish we could trace their chassis numbers...
more to come
Regards
Luis Mateus