The Historic Sports Car Club has taken steps to revive what was previously its struggling Super Touring series, with the creation of the Dunlop Saloon Car Cup – and in so doing has created a fresh sense of racing purpose for cars like the Ford Capri and Rover SD1.

The initiative opens the door to other evocative tin-top eras and there will be three separate classes, for Group A, Group 1 and the existing Super Tourers. Each will be named after a prominent saloon racer.

Group 1 competitors will race for the Tom Walkinshaw Trophy, named in honour of the Scot who scored many race victories in his own right and founded the eponymous team that ran saloon racing programmes for several manufacturers, including Rover, Mazda, Jaguar and BMW. In period, Group 1 catered for everything from Chevrolet Camaros to Minis via Triumph Dolomite Sprints, so the HSCC anticipates a diverse entry to line up this year.

Group A replaced Gp1 from the beginning of 1983 and entrants will be racing for the Tim Harvey Trophy, which honours the modern-day BTCC commentator who was a GpA front-runner in Rover SD1s and Ford Sierra RS500s.

Super Touring teams will be chasing the David Leslie Cup, which pays homage to the popular and successful Vauxhall, Honda and Nissan driver who lost his life in an air crash in 2008. As well as Super Tourers, this category will admit cars from the lower- cost BTC Touring era that followed in the early 2000s.

There is also likely to be an invitational class for curios such as a VW Golf GTI that was built to British GT regulations in 2003 and shared track space with Ferrari 360s, TVR T400Rs and Porsche 911s before eventually being outlawed.

There will be four meetings on the inaugural Dunlop Saloon Car Cup schedule, at Silverstone (May 18/19), Donington Park (June 8/9), Brands Hatch (June 29/30) and Oulton Park (August 24-26).