The saloons that thundered to short-lived success

British club racing lost one of its stalwarts when Pete Stevens died earlier this year. He was best known for his years in Thundersaloons, winning four titles, and in particular for the mighty Chevrolet-powered Vauxhall Carlton in which he claimed his last two crowns.

It's 35 years since the birth of the series, which featured some of the most powerful saloon cars ever to race in this country. Like so many successful categories of the era, it was dreamed up by Brands Hatch supremo John Webb and, as the moniker suggests, drew inspiration from the Thundersports series that had been running since 1983.

While Special Saloons, and the Super Saloons offshoot, had captured the imaginations of racers and fans alike in the 1970s, grid sizes were waning in the 1980s.

"It was all becoming very much spaceframes with a plastic body," remembers Tony Davies, polesitter for the first Thundersaloon race in his Blydenstein-tuned twin cam Vauxhall Firenza. "With a steel-bodied saloon car, you just didn't stand a chance. So when I saw the regulations come out for Thundersaloons, I thought, 'Well, this is just perfect for the Firenza'. It had to be a production steel-bodied shell and the engine had to be in its manufacturer's position. I thought, 'This is proper saloon car racing - this isn't dressed-up single-seaters'."

Two-driver races, run to a mini-enduro format, are commonplace now but were unusual in those days and served as another selling point to spectators and competitors. "I could share the driving with one of my brothers and share the cost," says Davies. Races of 50-75 miles also meant that reliability could be an issue for such highly developed cars, throwing in another variable.

Officially a series rather than a fully blown championship for the first two years, there was no doubt who the top dogs were in the inaugural season. That pole position aside, Davies' Firenza, which he shared with brother John in the secondary class for cars of up to 2.5 litres, was unable to live with the pace of Vince Woodman and Jonathan Buncombe's Broadspeed-built Ford 'Cologne' Capri. The Shell-backed Capri took the honours at the freezing Brands Hatch opener, establishing a theme that would continue as it won all eight races in 1985.

The following year, Woodman was joined by rising star John Cleland in a works-backed Vauxhall. Badged as a Senator, it was in fact an ex-Peter Brock Holden Commodore. The big V8 won eight of the 10 races in 1986, but was beaten first-time out at Snetterton by Rod Birley's Ford Sierra XR4, powered by a 3.4-litre Ford GAA V6 engine and shared by British Touring Car star Andy Rouse.

Still racing today, Birley was a Thundersaloon mainstay, a frontrunner in the series from its inception, although it would take until 1993 for him to lift the title. His XR4, built by Tony and Kevin Wood at Milton Motors in Maidstone, wasn't quite ready for the start of 1985 and thereby narrowly lost its off-track contest with Rouse's BTCC version to be the first racing Sierra. Shared with John Brindley, four podiums followed before Rouse brought his engineering expertise - and driving talent - in 1986.

"He's a very good engineer," says Birley. "It was just little things he'd noticed when he'd driven the car. He said, 'You could spend a fortune on this and you'd probably find a second and a half or you could spend a little bit of money and you'd probably find half to three-quarters of a second'."

From the start, Stevens had been a standout performer in his BDG-engined Ford Escort Mk2 - the Class B machine even taking an outright win at Castle Combe - and established himself as a regular frontrunner in 1987 when he acquired the title-winning Senator

Having the BTCC's most successful driver on board, when his other commitments allowed, was an endorsement of the series' status. There were other big names involved too: club racing legend Gerry Marshall co-drove the Davies Firenza and a handful of other cars on occasion before what looked set to be a title challenge in 1989. But the promising campaign alongside Nick Oatway in a Pontiac V8-engined Opel Manta adorned in a striking 'Stars 'n' Stripes' livery was derailed by reliability issues and an accident at Zandvoort.

Marshall's great friend and adversary Tony Lanfranchi was a winner on three occasions that year when he substituted for Cleland, who was on BTCC title-winning duty, and helped Woodman to a fourth title in five years. Dave Brodie, Jerry Mahony, Laurence Bristow and Sean Walker were other BTCC frontrunners who were attracted to sample the brutish power of Thundersaloons, while David Leslie won a Class B title alongside Hugh Chalmers in the Ecurie Ecosse Opel Manta.

The BTCC's switch to a single-class, two-litre formula in 1991 led to an influx of Sierra RS500s, which could be made to go even quicker in the alternative category. Mahony's machine - co-driven variously by its owner Bristow, Walker and ex-Formula 1 driver Slim Borgudd - edged Carlton-mounted Stevens and Chris Millard to the Thundersaloon title that year.

The category's profile had been further raised by manufacturer involvement, led by Vauxhall. After a year with the Senator, Dave Cook's GM Dealersport-backed squad introduced the Carlton in 1987. It would become arguably the series' most iconic machine, taking two titles with works backing and a further two with Stevens as a privateer.

"Dave brought a new level of professionalism to the series, which really meant that everybody had to up their game," recalls Birley. "It was really now starting to be quite serious with the sort of Vauxhall entourage that became involved."

From the start, Stevens had been a standout performer in his BDG-engined Ford Escort Mk2 - the Class B machine even taking an outright win at Castle Combe - and established himself as a regular frontrunner in 1987 when he acquired the title-winning Senator. He and co-driver Neil Facey took the crown that year, despite not winning a race, as the mighty Carlton suffered some reliability gremlins.

The pair had, like Birley, graduated from short oval racing, blazing a trail that many others would follow. Overall race winner Stuart Jackson and successful Class B racers John Edwards/Trevor Shaw, Paul Sherlock/Robert Bridger and the Morris brothers, Ricky and Danny, were among those to step up from Hot Rods, while Brian Powles used his knowledge of Chevrolet V8s from BriSCA Formula 1 stock cars to make the switch to circuits.

"A lot of guys were stepping up to the formula from either oval racing or modified saloons and it was quite a big jump actually because these were serious bits of kits with a lot of power," says Birley. "[The racing] was quite dramatic. [Competitors] were working normal jobs during the week then come the weekend you put your overalls on and you felt like you were in a big arena and playing with the big boys.

"Quite a few drivers jumped over to the Thundersaloons because there was good prize money, which clearly whetted their appetites. They could, with not a lot of work, use the cars which they'd used on the ovals."

It was no coincidence that the Mk2 Escorts and Toyota Starlets, which were the backbone of the lower-powered 'entry-level' Class B, were also the cars to have in National Hot Rods.

Very healthy prize money of £2500 per round came thanks to backing from Shell Oils, Norcros, and Fast Car and Auto Express magazines, and was significantly boosted by a promotional push in later years. Allied to innovative television coverage on satellite channel Screensport, it made for an attractive prospect. The spectacular cars drew large crowds to circuits and - strange as it may seem in the current racing landscape - some considered Thundersaloons a genuine rival to the BTCC.

As that was transitioning to the Super Touring era, with grids increasingly filled by front-wheel-drive cars, the Thundersaloon promoters sensed an opportunity to provide a more exuberant alternative.

Make-or-break rule changes followed but, sadly, they didn't have the desired effect. Gone were the mid-race driver changes, replaced by a pair of back-to-back races with the option of one driver contesting both. Then Class B was scrapped and, perhaps most controversially, cars for which the base model had been out of production for more than three years were banned.

"I could see what they were trying to do," says Birley. "They wanted the big bangers, they wanted to promote it as the fastest saloon car series, and go down that route. But the trouble was, guys who'd supported the series for a few years suddenly didn't have a market to sell their cars and didn't have the money to build a new car. It was done too quickly. If it had been phased over a year or two, it would have given guys the opportunity.

"I needed the prize money to put back into the car, to keep it competitive. The prize money went out of the series and it wasn't viable to race that sort of car" Pete Stevens

"It left a bad taste because there was a lot of expensive machinery that suddenly became redundant," he concludes.

At a stroke, half the field was rendered ineligible. New cars were built but not enough to prevent grid sizes plummeting and, as the downward spiral began, prize money was slashed, further reducing numbers. The nadir came with just six cars contesting the 1994 opener at Brands. The drivers united and formed an association in an attempt to save the series, with a secondary class reintroduced, but the damage had been done.

"I needed the prize money to put back into the car, to keep it competitive," said Stevens, who took the title in its final year. "The prize money went out of the series and it wasn't viable to race that sort of car."

Class B stalwart Ricky Parker-Morris, a prime mover in modern-day CSCC Special Saloons and Modsports - where he still campaigns his Cosworth turbo-powered Peugeot 309 - believes the economic recession of the early 1990s played its part, too.

"The world has never returned to what it was before 1993," he says. "That's when it all died, just after the recession."

Not only were competitors having to tighten their belts, but the circuits were developing new business models. With the rise of the BTCC and its TOCA support package there was little room for the promotion of any other national-level championships.

"It was sad really, because we suddenly realised that we'd been used as a bit of a pawn in a bigger game," Birley concedes.

The once-great category limped on into 1995, running alongside Modified Saloons, but no further. Some of the cars found a home in Formula Saloons and, more recently, the Special Saloons and Modsports series. But the days of a Jaguar XJ220 engine under the bonnet of a Ford Escort (as developed by Derek Tyndall in 1993) or a Chevrolet-engined Honda Legend (1990 runner-up in the hands of Tony Wolfe and Terry Nicholls) competing against Pontiac-powered Vauxhall Calibras and Toyota Supras, and many more exotic creations, were no more.

Iconic Thundersaloons

Ford Sierra Porsche

While American V8s or turbocharged Cosworth YB fours became the engines of choice for those aiming at overall honours, the Gartrac-developed Ford Sierra of 1989 followed a very different route. Squeezed into its engine bay was a 3.2-litre twin-turbo Porsche flat-six more commonly found in the German marque's Group C 956s and 962s.

Designed for a rear-engined car, the motor was rotated 180 degrees and mated to an Xtrac gearbox, powering the wheels through a modified Jaguar differential. It delivered up to around 750bhp, although was reckoned to be capable of 1000bhp with maximum boost.

"The engine was air-cooled so it blew the air down and out through the back of the car, which increased the suction to the ground. We didn't realise that - we were almost driving on a cushion of air" Rod Birley

The rear end incorporated suspension and brakes from the MG Metro 6R4 Group B rally car but the machine did not look as lairy as some. To keep the car as streamlined as possible, its wide wheels were largely accommodated inboard rather than via extended wheel arches.

First mooted towards the end of 1986, it was over two years before the car made its debut in the opening round of 1989 at Brands Hatch. Podiums there and at Oulton Park appeared promising, but the results masked a major flaw.

"The car kept going light," recalls Birley, who shared the driving with Terry Nicholls. "I remember one day at Oulton Park in qualifying, coming up over Clay Hill and the car took off. How I never had the biggest accident ever, I don't know. I somehow managed to gather it together.

"Porsche had developed their very effective under-floor venturi system. The engine was air-cooled so it blew the air down and out through the back of the car, which increased the suction to the ground. We didn't realise that - we were almost driving on a cushion of air."

There was no hiding from the issue, but a workaround was developed, and Birley remembers the car was much better next time out at Zandvoort. Its sheer grunt ate up the long straight but put too much strain on the clutch. By then, Nicholls had had enough. He reckons he'd sunk more than £35,000 into the scheme - and that was just on the rolling chassis, as Birley sourced the engine.

Birley brought in Barrie 'Whizzo' Williams the following week at Snetterton and the pair challenged for victory until the Jaguar axle broke. The ambitious project had reached the end of the road.

"That [result] would have been a turning point," rues Birley. "But, by now, everyone was getting a bit despondent because it cost a lot of money and we'd not really understood what the problem was with putting the engine in the front."

Heavily reworked and powered by a Pontiac V8, the car reappeared as 'Black Thunder' in Rob Cox's hands, proving quick but unreliable. It passed to Steve Wallace and then, post-Thundersaloons and now Chevrolet-powered, suffered a heavy crash at Oulton with Michael Blomfield at the wheel.

Vauxhall Carlton Chevrolet

Commissioned by GM Dealersport and built by Dave Cook, who ran the works team, the Chevrolet V8-engined Carlton TS6000 won its first three races in 1987 and would become the most successful Thundersaloon of them all, taking four titles between 1988 and 1995.

Pete Stevens, synonymous with the machine in later years, admitted it was built with no expense spared - contemporary reports suggesting a £150,000 investment from Vauxhall.

"I think it was possibly one of the most expensive steel-bodied racing cars around," said Stevens, before his death earlier this year. "All the panels were Kevlar with carbonfibre strands. Although it was a big car, I think it weighed about 1100kg, which is quite light."

Following the early season hat-trick for Vince Woodman and John Cleland, reliability woes allowed Stevens and Neil Facey to usurp them - ironically, at the wheel of the Vauxhall-badged Holden Commodore the Carlton replaced.

"I remember taking it to Donington Park to drive it once, and it frightened me so much my lap times were slower than in the Manta!" Joe Ward

But the Carlton pair dominated in 1988, taking seven wins from 10 starts (and disqualified from first on the road in two more), and Woodman added another title in 1989, joined by Cleland when his British Touring Car Championship commitments allowed. Then in Stevens' hands, the car claimed further crowns in 1992 and 1995.

Other than masses of torque and power - Stevens reckoned the small-block Chevy was good for 570bhp when bored out to six litres from the original 5.7 - the Carlton's success was not based on magic bullets. Its relatively simple technology was just extremely well sorted, with MacPherson struts on the front and a rear set-up that combined a Watt's linkage to prevent longitudinal travel with a Panhard rod for lateral control.

"Typical to how a rally Escort Mk2 would be in its day," said Stevens. "I don't know whether a lot of people knew this, but it had a Ford nine-inch back axle in it, which they called a nine-inch Detroit locker diff so it didn't actually have a limited-slip diff. And, the thing is, when you drove it though fast corners it didn't push the car on - you'd swear blind it was a normal limited-slip diff. It worked really well."

That's not to say it couldn't be a brute to drive. At the end of 1989, Vauxhall sold the car to Joe Ward, who had just been pipped to the Class B title sharing an Opel Manta 400 with Tony Dickinson. But it would only make one appearance in 1990 - a successful return for Cleland alongside Special Saloon ace Dickinson at Silverstone - before Stevens snapped it up for 1991.

"I remember taking it to Donington Park to drive it once, and it frightened me so much my lap times were slower than in the Manta!" laughs Ward. "I thought: 'What on earth am I doing with this?'"

More recently, Stevens raced the car in Special Saloons and Modsports and took it to the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

"The Carlton still is a crowd-puller," he said. "If you can get invited to Goodwood, you know you've got there."

Honda Prelude Cosworth

The Honda Prelude might not have been an obvious candidate to be a track icon, but it became the ultimate Thundersaloon, winning back-to-back titles in 1993 and 1994.

Its builder, Jim Morgan, was involved in a number of Thundersaloons over the years, including the multiple race-winning Mazda RX-7 Cosworth, which was twice runner-up in the championship.

The second time was in 1992 when Mike Wilson was joined by Birley who realised that, having been uprated to the YB RS500 engine, the car was being held back by its older-spec Hewland transmission. In response, Morgan mooted his idea of the Prelude to Birley, who had connections at Honda through club-racing contacts.

"The handling was just phenomenal. Because we had the gearbox as part of the transaxle at the back, the weight distribution was perfect" Rod Birley

"They were keen to get involved in the championship because Honda was on quite a big product push into the UK," recalls Birley. "They'd got the Swindon factory and wanted to make inroads into getting away from the rather staid image that Hondas had."

The project quickly became a reality and featured suspension from a Spice Group C2 sportscar and a Hewland transaxle of similar provenance. But there was one issue: sourcing a suitable engine. Original plans to run the 500 bhp-plus Acura NSX engine used in IMSA fell through when, with time running out before the start of the 1993 season, it transpired that it wasn't all it seemed.

"They'd had special blocks made and everything," says Birley. "They didn't want it to go abroad because the wrong people might have seen it! So I went back to Honda and said, 'Look, what are we going to do?' We had sponsors on board, some big companies coming along. 'All I've got left is my RS YB engine'.

"We shoehorned that in and it was quite funny because Honda kept saying, 'We'll get something sorted'. They never did, which was a bit sad, but in a way it was probably a blessing in disguise."

In Birley and Richard Piper's hands, the car romped to eight wins in 10 races mid-season then cruised to the title, dethroning the Vauxhall Carlton and ending Birley's long wait for success.

"The handling was just phenomenal," says Birley. "Because we had the gearbox as part of the transaxle at the back, the weight distribution was perfect. We had the engine set back as far as we could up to the bulkhead.

"Everything on it was bulletproof - Jim spent a lot of time looking at it. We had a proper full-sized rear wing. We looked at what the Carlton had and we woke up to the fact that we needed to get the aerodynamics right, we needed to get the handling right - it's the whole package. In previous years we were getting it two-thirds right and not the last bit.

"This time, because we started with a clean sheet of paper, and we had some decent money and a good bit of engineering skill, it really cracked the nut. It took a long time!"

Photos by Gary Hawkins and Andy Mason