TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED

Touring Car racing has long attracted some oddball entrants. Here are our top 10 tin-top iconoclasts

- RICHARD HESELTINE

Touring Car racing in all its many forms has existed for aeons. It was formally adopted in 1958 with the arrival of the British Saloon Car Championship; since then, tin-tops have at times flourished across Europe and beyond, but also foundered - and often due to outside forces pressing in (global recessions, the occasional Fuel Crisis, that sort of thing). What is clear, though, is that some entrants, builders and racers went their own way by fielding cars that may not have been the most obvious choice of circuit weaponry.

Gathered here are 10 of our favourites. Some blazed trails only to then get burned, while there were those that were foiled before they were halfway out of the workshop. Others, meanwhile, would clearly never amount to much, and then there were those that were but marketing exercises. Here we stick to vehicles that made at least one start and competed in a mainstream championship or event. And, for full disclosure, one of our picks isn’t even strictly a car...

1 AMC Spirit AMX