Originally created as 2 litre Touring Cars for the British Touring Car Championship in 1990, Super Touring was officially defined by the FIA as ‘Class 2’ in 1993.
A ‘Super Tourer’ must be a four-seat, four-door saloon model of which at least 25,000 units have been made in a 12 month period. Cars must be a minimum overall length of 4.2m and have a naturally aspirated engine, with no more than 6 cylinders or a 2-litre capacity.
Special race-developed gearboxes are allowed, with the majority having six forward gears featuring a sequential gearshift mechanism. Electronic control of the clutch or gearbox is banned, as is electronic traction control.
The suspension must match the type as that of the original car, but still feature many differences from the road car, for example, the spring and damper rates are four to five times that of a road-going car. Much of the suspension is adjustable, such as the anti-roll bars, the height of the suspension, camber and toe-in, toe-out of the wheels.
The original rules stated that teams could only fit aerodynamic devices available through dealers, however, when Alfa Romeo entered a 155 into the 1994 BTCC season the car featured a front spoiler that could be moved to act as a splitter and a rear spoiler with a pair of extensions to give the car more downforce.
Following protests from rival teams, the series organisers TOCA decided that the wings were illegal and were forced to run their cars exactly as sold, without the rear spoiler extensions. Following the controversy, the FIA changed the regulation to allow cars to use non-production aerodynamic devices of a restricted size.
Super Touring was faded out in the late-90s/early 2000s due to the rising cost of preparing a car for competition, with the approximate cost of building a top-level car nearing £250,000. The final year of Super Touring regulations in the BTCC was 2000, succeeded by BTC-Touring.