I'm an idiot; Will someone explain to me all the Groups?

[Fish_Flake]

I have no idea what the "Groups" refer to in reference to motorsport classification in the 1980s. What did they stand for?

[Peter Mallett]

Well for an idiot that's a good question. But it goes back beyond the eighties.

You are possibly thinking of Groups C (sportscars) and A (Touring Cars). But there was also Group1 Touring Cars, Group 5 Saloon Cars, Group B Rally Cars, Group 6 Sportscars etc. These date back to the sixties and I believe refer to Appendix J of the (now) FIA sporting code.

Hopefully somebody here can provide the definitions but it all relates to homologation and championship classification.

[Fish_Flake]

That's exactly what I mean. I can't figure it out.

[racer69]

As far as i know, from the 1960s until 1982, there was Groups 1-6, as Peter said they were in Appendix J of the FIA manual.

Groups 1 - 4 were generally used for Touring Cars and Rallying. Groups 1 & 3 were the 'production car' classes, whilst Groups 2 & 4 were the 'competition spec' classes, allowing improvements to the cars for competition use.

Groups 1 & 4 were the most popular in rallying, with Group 4 the premier division. Group 1 & 2 were used mostly in Touring Cars (or variations of those set of rules).

Groups 5 & 6 were for Sportscars as mentioned, if i remember correctly Group 5 was silouette, Group 6 prototype.

In 1982 Appendix J was completely rewritten, and all we had was Groups A,B & C. Group was for Touring Cars and Rallying, Group B for rallying and sportscars, and Group C for Sportscars.

As Peter said it all related to homologation and the amount of cars required to be built to be classified in a certain group.

[Vitesse]

This was the siruation in 1972:

Category A: Recognized production cars (numbers in brackets indicate required minimum production in 12 consecutive months)
G1 Series production touring cars (5000)
G2 Special touring cars (1000)
G3 Series production grand touring cars (1000)
G4 Special touring cars (500)

Category B
G5 Sports cars

Category C
G7 Two-seater racing cars
G8 International formula racing cars
G9 "Formule Libre" racing cars

G7 covered sports/racers like the CanAm/Interserie cars. G9 was any single seater which didn't conform to any recognised formula.

At that point the rules had just changed. Previously touring cars were Group 5, but I can't remember what the other groups were. There were also homologation rules regarding sports cars under the old rules, which was why Porsche had to produce 25 examples of the 917 before it could race in the WSC.

[alfasud]

It's not quite that simple for the numerical groups from the 1960's/70's because the definitions changed over time.... for example in the 60's Group 5 was considered a Touring Car formula with cars like Alfa Romeo GTA, Escort Twin Cam/FVA, Porsche 911.... yes the 911 had 4 seats and was considered a Touring Car.... at least in the 1960's.

There's some interesting background at Frank de Jong European Touring car pages...
http://etcc-history.it4us.nl/

The section on 1970-1975 was quite interesting reading..... "Porsche tried to homologate the 911 as a touring car, but they went too far, trying to get basically the same car in group 2, 3 and 4. Rear seating room was decided to be too small by FIA, so the car was out. On the other hand, Alfa Romeo got it right and could race the 1300 GTAJ and 2000 GTAm - and old faithfull GTA 1600 became a GT and raced in group 4".

So Group 5 began mainly catering for production based (but highly modified) touring cars and ended up being a formula for silhouette GT's as racer69 mentioned.

[Lee Janotta]

It produced arguably the healthiest period ever for motorsport, though. You could take basically the same car (say a 911 RSR) and race it in Trans-Am, IMSA, at LeMans, in the World Championship for makes, or in any of hundreds of national and even club championships. Wildcard entries abounded, giving lots of talented drivers exposure just by bringing the car they'd been running locally to one of the big events, and putting in a good performance.

Likewise with the open-wheel formulas and the rally groups. Never before or since was there such uniformity across the globe in the preparation and homologation rules.