What is a "touring car?"

[Knestis]

GT cars - Grand Touring - come in all shapes and sizes so the inclusion of "sports cars" in GTL (et al.) isn't the conceptual issue that it is if GT cars are plopped in with touring cars. And I'd argue that the same problem I describe here exists in Improved Touring but I don't really care anymore.

But most importantly, to the question of "limiting the audience," my point is that we de facto limit the audience by allowing GT/sports cars in ST. We allow a tiny handful of make/model options and give them enough of an advantage that they beat out the DOZENS of 2- and 4-door chassis out there that might well be competitive and interesting, were they not prejudiced against by the fundamentals of the rules and listings. (Number of doors, by the way, hasn't been a general criterion for definition of touring cars around the world.) The way things are headed right now, absent any intervention, the future is STL populated with modded Miatas. Why would anyone build anything else at this point?

The CURRENT grids shouldn't however be used to gauge any kind of success, with the ITA/SM double dippers making up the numbers. People most emphatically did *not* build those cars for STL; they run the class out of convenience. Tailoring the rules to encourage them to do that is going to result in a very one-dimensional class.

In STU, something close to a dealer-showroom Lotus will beat up on a purpose-built AWD turbo sedan, or exotic multivalve "real" touring car. And it's not an economical solution, either.

Looking at some numbers, the interior volume of a typical coupe/sedan in the 4-cylinder, 4-person people hauler is about 2x that of the Miatas and Lotuses. That's not a close thing. The one interesting anomaly is the RX8, with more interior volume than (for example) the new Civic Coupe that has run STL.

K