May 12, 2025

The Great GT-R Lie & Why You Should Stop Spreading It

While it did stomp the competition in racing and tuning all over the globe, the Nissan R32 Skyline GT-R was not responsible for killing Group A racing. Let me say that again for the people eating boogers in the back of the room (yes, that's you Derryn): THE R32 SKYLINE GT-R DID NOT KILL GROUP A TOURING CAR RACING.

One of the most common fallacies parroted on the Internet today is the absolute nonsense that the success of the R32 Skyline GT-R meant other touring car racing teams and manufacturers complained to the FIA and their local governing bodies so much all the rule-makers got together and killed off the Group A class formula. However, in the words of the great Mike Nolan, "yeeaaah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah".

Like almost everything to do with motorsport, the real reason is money.

Flashack to the very beginning and the FIA introduced the Group A formula for touring cars and rallying in 1983. Their hope was to globally align the regulations for building production car-based touring cars as this would hopefully drive more manufacturer interest in touring car racing around the globe.

At the formula's peak in the late-80s there were factory teams from Ford, BMW, Mercedes, Volvo, Rover, Jaguar, Nissan, Alfa-Romeo, Toyota, Mitsubishi, and more. The FIA (the global body in charge of motorsport) required 2500 road going examples to homologate a car for Group A touring cars, with three racing divisions split by engine capacity.

Fast-forward to 1990 when the R32 GT-R made its touring car debut, and the landscape had changed massively. While the BMW E30 M3, Holden Commodore and Cosworth-fettled AMG-Mercedes 190Es remained naturally aspirated, the fastest cars were all turbocharged: Ford's Sierra RS Cosworth, Volvo's 240 Turbo, and Nissan's Skyline were dominating the long, fast tracks where horsepower counted.

To win against these force-fed brutes meant manufacturers would have to build turbocharged road cars when they weren't set-up to develop such cars. And then they'd have to build them into winning race cars. The bean-counters checked their chests of pirate dubloons and gold sheckles, did their sums, and manufacturers quickly started pulling out... even as early as the late '80s.

Fanbois mistakenly believe that complaints from Holden and Ford killed Group A in Australia (and the use of modified production cars), in favour of the 5.0-litre V8 formula. But (and this is a Nicky Minaj-sized "but") while the 650hp all-wheel-drive Group A GT-Rs were a mighty thing, it was costs and flagging manufacturer interest in the class which killed Group A.

By 1992, the effects of the recent global recession, plus the cost of car development meant nearly all the manufacturers who'd helped kick-start the class had bailed out in favour of other motorsport classes. These manufacturers saw the spiralling costs to develop race cars, plus having to produce road-going homologation examples of these ever-wilder machines to sell to the public, and bailed.

Fred Gibson is on record saying the Aussie GT-Rs cost over $1mil to develop in 1990!

The R32 GT-R is an epic car, and a complete tour de force. I remember when they turned up and suddenly a Euro V12 exotic or thumping V8 muscle car wasn't the fastest thing around... but by the time the R32 Skyline GT-R started racing in the Aussie Touring Car Championship the class was already doomed (globally) thanks to manufacturers pulling out of the class like it was a pickle in their cheeseburger.

There are people who think the GT-R turning up at the end of the class's life and winning everything means the FIA quickly shut the class down to stop Nissan winning. The reality is the GT-R turned up and beat up old, outdated machinery like the Holden Commodore, MA70 Supra, Mercedes 190E, and even the Sierra RS Cosworth (all of which debuted around '86/'87). All of these cars were well overdue to be replaced by new-generation racing machinery by 1992.

As a side-note, Gentleman Jim Richards took out the Australian Touring Car Championship that year, but he actually did most of that legwork through the season in an older R31 Skyline GTS-R, with the R32 debuting later in the season. Another fable that the R32 GT-R simply turned up and stomped everything.

Group A peaked in 1987 with the World Touring Car Championship, promoted by F1 tsar Bernie Ecclestone. 11 rounds were run in France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Australia, NZ, Japan, Czechoslovakia, and the UK, with Roberto Ravaglia in a Schnitzer E30 M3 BMW winning it. The huge costs ballooning and lack of return for manufacturers saw the European Touring Car Championship canned after 1988, while Japan, Australia and Germany were all done with homologation-based touring cars after 1994.

Many manufacturers were moving to smaller, front-wheel-drive platforms and this suited the new 2L Touring Car formula (aka "TOCA" or "Super Tourers") better. Safety was another reason for moving away from homologation-based touring cars, as purpose-built race cars are far safer to crash than a modified family sedan and it's nice to not watch people die in racing crashes.

While we're popping GT-R Fanboi bubbles, another interesting fact is the R32 GT-R isn't the most successful Group A race car, either. Motorsport Magazine crunched the numbers and claimed the Sierra RS500 is (statistically) the most successful road-derived racing car of all time with an 84.6% win-rate.

Sadly, like many great periods of motorsport from history, Group A touring cars was a victim of its own success. The grid diversity is something most race fans still pine for, with Aussie touring car fans forced to choose between Ford Falcons and Holden Commodores from 1993 and, while the racing was awesome, it missed the colour of seeing all the different brands and models of car on the track like in Group A (and Group C touring cars before it).

But the Skyline GT-R didn't kill that. Money did.