I decided to take a trip down memory lane the other day and dusted off some old VCR tapes to see what I had kicking around. I stumbled on the very first North American Touring Car Championship race ever, which took place at Lime Rock Park back in 1996. It's kind of quaint now, but at the time I was so excited about the NATCC. It was a blast to finally have some "real" racing come to the USA.Looking back on it, it's a little underwhelming. Pretty much all the teams, minus the Pac West / Dodge Stratus team, were bare-bones independent teams. All the cars, minus the Dodges, were imported from various Super Touring championships from around the world. Not a lot of cash, pretty clearly, but to me these cars were amazing. Anyways, I did a little poking around and found some of this on the net. I was surprised actually, as not many people seem to remember the series, but some fairly well known drivers such as Darren Law and Randy Pobst both got their first shot at the big time through this series. Darren in a BMW and Randy in an Accord.
So enjoy the old school-ness. It was pretty cool to look back on these...I wonder where the cars all ended up? Probably hidden in some garages somewhere, 6" of dust on them, most not turning a wheel since the series ended in 1997. I'm not sure where they would be used these days, but it would be cool to see them out and about. Seems a shame. It's also a shame that I had signed posters from most of the drivers from when we went to see the series in Cleveland Ohio, and I'm pretty sure I trashed them a couple years back. Ah well, such is life. At least we have awesome things like youtube so people can post up these treasure trove videos for us to remember.
_WRS
i loved the contours/mondeos. i wanted one so bad when i was 15.
ReplyDeleteYeah I really liked the Contours too...I was super annoyed that the Hondas were such consistent winners, hehe. The SVT Contour was a really cool car, totally one of those "if I had a million dollars" models where I'd own one if I could.
ReplyDeletei was there. had a great time and i was excited about the prospect of this series; too bad it didn't succeed.
ReplyDeletei went with my girlfriend and we enjoyed our time at lime rock, as we always do, walking around in the paddock and getting to see the cars up close. i think i have an autograph from one of the dodge drivers. thanks for rekindling the memories!