Maybe it's time for DTM to rethink the whole used-car business. If they are not able to maintain a twenty car field, even with ride-buyers and two year old cars, they should really either think about
radical cost cutting new regulations or about introducing a second privateer friendly class of cars. The used cars are already like a 2nd division, why not going on step further?
How about this:
- 2 Divisions, racing together.
- Div1: Current DTM cars and regs, four or five new cars from both manufactuers, old cars can be sold to privateers, but no monetary support from Audi and Mercedes and no weight breaks.
- Div2: Cheaper tubeframe cars, no (or limited) manufacturer involvement, maybe spec chassis, with mfg specific body and engine.
Something like this:
http://www.rileytech.com/PDFs/Riley_GT_Handout.pdf
I'm sure Riley could also fit four-door silouettes on their GT-chassis and with the current exchange rate, these cars aren't much more expensive than Super2000, if at all. Pratt and Miller have a Pontiac G6 (same platform as Opel Vectra IIRC) chassis and there are some other manufacturers of such chassis.
Single class Touring car racing has only been a trend of the last 20 years, maybe they should look back at what worked in the past?