Group A Toyota Celica Supras - History trace (super merge!!)

[ART Racing]

Chunterer, yes what you have listed there very close from what I know. First car must have been a LHD car, as that is what is photographed in the original homologation papers, would have been built early 1983. What then happened to this car I don't know, as my car is the first circuit car, built early/mid 1983 and it is RHD. Perhaps this first LHD car ended up as the 1985 rally car? It has some things on it that were quite different to my car, such as an aluminium drop tank. Either that or it was a mockup to just get the papers done and was disassembled later, have seen that done in Group A.

I believe my car was supposed to be Win's car for the entire 1983 season, however Toyota didn't get the car homologated until 1 Aug 1983; so you see my car entered in races before that but I don't believe it raced until the GP weekend. As you say, my car was used until about May/June 1984 (don't know the exact date), and was replaced with the second car. This started out with a 'P' type bodyshell with flares, however this body was not homologated until Aug 1985 so I believe they must have been told to take the flared arches and quarters off: you later see the car with 'L' type panels without arches, both in England and at Spa 1985, then the second Sheene car finally gets flares after Aug 85. Interestingly, in Australia, Peter was told that you were not allowed to have the flares without the American style rear spoiler so my car got both even though it made refuelling a real bugger: the other 2 circuit cars never ran the rear spoiler, so different interpretations of the same rule.

My car was taken to Spa 84 by Gordon Spice (5th outright) then came to Australia, won the first ever Group A class here (Sandown 1984) then had the first of many bad prangs at Bathurst 1984. Peter used it until Bathurst 1987 where it failed to qualify, then it went to NZ for 2 years to do occasional races in the Nissan/Mobil series, before coming back to Australia.

Barry takes over from Win after 1984, and as you say destroys the 2nd circuit car at Thruxton, and the third car is never as good as the previous ones so they give it away at the end of 85.

Meanwhile, the LHD Rally car wins in 1985, as has already been documented, then they give rallying with Supras away as well.

So at least 4 cars built for Hughes, but have never been able to get many leads to verify the exact count. I have had a look at the Group N Belga team cars, but they have different roll cages so I am pretty sure none of them are ex Hughes LHD cars.

Would love to know if anyone else has anything more concrete on this history, bit hard to compile form the other side of the world.

John