Quote:
Originally Posted by Purist
You also should realize that no world series will happen without major manufacturer backing. With just Audi and Peugeot potentially for 2010, I don't see there being enough of that backing for something like this to work on its own merits. In the Group C era, you had 4-8 automakers at any given time. And there never really were fewer than 4, until 1991 that is. It takes the big bucks to go globetrotting, get together enough cars across the globe to make a decent grid, and effective promotion on such a massive scale isn't cheap either.
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Looking back at Group C, that's not strictly true- Up to the last few years, there were rarely more than a couple of regular
full-time manufacturers at a time- It was predominantly Porsche v Lancia in the early years, until Jaguar joined in pretty much as Lancia were fading away. The other manufacturers tended to dip in and out, rarely running full-season programmes (the Japanese in particular used to do nothing more than their 'home' round and Le Mans, with Mazda usually also turning up at Silverstone as part of their LM preparations) The bulk of the grid was usually a strong cast of mainly Porsche-mounted privateers, and the 'second-division' C2 class.
The really heavy manufacturer full-season involvement didn't come about until 1989 or so when the Japanese manufacturers started to run the full season, and we had that wonderful few years that saw Jaguar, Mercedes, Aston Martin, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Peugeot etc involved before it started to decline with the FIA's ill-conceived 3.5 litre engine rules
I guess it's a different world now in terms of costs, but a lot of the privateer teams
did find the money and sponsors go globetrotting and take in the long-haul trips to Japan etc. The other big difference, of course, was that those privateers could buy a customer car that was good enough, in the right hands, to take on and beat the factory competition-Joest, Brun, Kremer, John Fitzpatrick and Richard Lloyd all beating the factory Porsches from time to time