It had been great while it lasted. The 1992 FIA Sportscar World Championship was proof that you only need two cars to make a motor race, although strictly speaking there were as many as four or five front-running cars per meeting; those rounds that weren’t cancelled. Political machinations had served to neuter the series before the season even began. It was a sad end for anyone who saw Group C in its pomp, a wonderful era of racing that left an indelible impression.

Arriving in 1982, this was a category that breathed new life into an arena of motor sport that, like a dead horse, had been flogged once too often during the previous half-a-decade. Grids during the Group 6 period waned as makes departed, and the few that lingered racked up hollow victories over ragtag privateers.

FISA responded with a series based, if only initially, on fuel efficiency. This acted as a stabilising force and attracted former F1 stars, young hotshots looking to make a name, competent journeymen and local heroes. Oh, and manufacturers. In North America the movement gained similar momentum, although typically they did things their own way. FISA’s hopes of fashioning a link with the IMSA failed to reach fruition after IMSA’s committee rejected the fuel-based rules. Instead it introduced an equivalency formula – Grand Touring Prototypes – based on engine size and weight. It too flourished, with IndyCar and even NASCAR stars dipping in for a go.

It was fantastic. Then F1-style 3.5-litre engines arrived in 1990, leading many to surmise this was to entice manufacturers into jumping ship to F1 instead. Costs skyrocketed, factory teams made for the door, and in ’92 Group C died.

Let’s celebrate the great and good of Group C: the class may exist in the past tense but, its appeal hasn’t diminished.

Porsche 956/962

No car symbolised Group C like the Porsche 956 and, by proxy, the 962. Six Le Mans wins was just the start; a seventh came 12 years after the first. The fact it outlived the formula says everything…

Departing from standard Porsche practice, the 956 featured a monocoque, due largely to the need for ground effects but also because of safety requirements. Not that there was anything particularly innovative about the 956’s make-up, the tub comprising sheet aluminium. Bodywork was Kevlar, glassfibre and aluminium. The heart of the 956 was lifted from the 1981 Le Mans-winning 936/81, the fuel-injected 2.65-litre flat-six being topped off with a pair of KKK turbos. In the car’s debut at the Pace Petroleum Six Hours at Silverstone in May ’82, Derek Bell and Jacky Ickx finished second behind a works Lancia and first in the Group C class (Group 6 cars were still allowed that season). By June the Porsche steamroller was in full effect: the Rothmans-liveried works cars swept the podium at Le Mans with Bell and Ickx at the top.

The 956 was the dominant player, with the detail-driven B-spec version arriving a year on, before it too was succeeded by the 962. Conceived as an IMSA version of the existing car, the big difference was the single-turbo, 935-derived engine (2.8- and later 3-litre) and lengthened wheelbase to bring the pedal box behind the front axle line. Raced by the works in Europe from 1985 as IMSA’s pedal box regs were universally adopted, the 962 – or rather the 962C in Grp C-spec – would spearhead the factory squad’s charge until Jaguar and Sauber upped the ante in the late ’80s. However, the beauty of the 956/962 was that it was an excellent customer racer, the privateer Dauer Racing 962C pictured here being a case in point. Driven by everyone from Ayrton Senna to AJ Foyt, Sir Jack Brabham to Henri Toivonen, few cars played host to as many different drivers as the Weissach workhorse. And while it would ultimately be ballasted into oblivion in the World Sports Prototype Championship, the 962 continued to rack up wins in IMSA.

This was due in no small part to the ingenuity of privateers. The late Richard Lloyd kicked things off with his own replacement/development tub (956GTi) in 1984. John Thompson’s TC Prototypes concern was also highly regarded for its own-brand chassis design; Walter Brun and the Kremer brothers were customers for its honeycomb aluminium monocoques.

Among the more varied designs was Vern Schuppan’s street-legal version in 1991, and Jochen Dauer’s Dauer 962 Le Mans, which was allowed to compete at La Sarthe in 1994 and triumphed outright.

But that wasn’t the final hurrah. A more authentic 962 run by Team Taisan won an All-Japan Grand Touring Car Championship round at Fuji in August 1994. For perspective, 956s were already appearing in historic meetings Stateside. Now that’s longevity.

Jaguar XJR-9

While Jaguar claimed five Le Mans wins in the 1950s, it had been absent since 1964. Twenty years later Bob Tullius’ Group 44 team fielded a brace of gorgeous Lee Dykstra-designed XJR-5s. They failed to last, but did enough to convince Jaguar there was more to be won…

Jaguar’s big wins in Group C would be realised with a different team altogether. A contract between Jaguar and Tom Walkinshaw had been signed in September 1984. A new, entirely British car, the XJR-6, would spearhead Jaguar’s world championship bid. The resultant Tony Southgate-designed car made its race debut at Mosport Park in August ’85, with Martin Brundle, Mike Thackwell and Jean-Louis Schlesser finishing third in the 6.2-litre (later 6.5-litre) V12 machine. Derek Warwick and Eddie Cheever steered one to honours in the 1986 Silverstone 1000Kms but it would be the model that followed which truly cemented Jaguar’s international return.

The closely related 7-litre XJR-8 claimed its first win in March ’87 at Jarama, driven by Jan Lammers and John Watson. By the end of the season, British brawn had batted away the German challenge with eight World Sports Prototype Championship wins from 10 rounds. Five-time victor Raul Boesel took the drivers’ crown. Yet victory at Le Mans proved elusive; the XJR-9 would remedy this situation with Johnny Dumfries and Andy Wallace joining Lammers in the winning car in 1988 (the XJR-9LM pictured here finished 16th driven by Danny Sullivan, Davy Jones and Price Cobb). This triumph was all the more remarkable since Lammers was obliged to drive in fourth gear throughout the closing stages – his mechanical sympathy breaking Porsche’s stranglehold on Le Mans.

There would be five other wins for Jaguar that year, with Brundle taking the drivers’ title and TWR Jaguar the manufacturers’ prize. However, it would be a different story the following year as Sauber came to the fore. Success was limited to IMSA, where Jaguar bookended its season with wins in the Daytona 24 Hours and the season finale at Del Mar. Into 1990 and the twin-turbo, 3.5-litre XJR-11 scored only once in the championship. Brundle and Alain Ferté won the Silverstone 1000Kms, while Brundle also claimed Le Mans honours alongside Cobb and John Nielsen.

The pace of the Silver Arrows began to recede for 1991, as the Ross Brawn-designed Jaguar XJR-14 became the class of the field, with only Peugeot providing meaningful competition. Silk Cut Jaguar lifted the teams’ gong with Teo Fabi taking the drivers’ title from Derek Warwick, who was still reeling from the tragic death of his brother Paul in a British F3000 accident. As Group C limped into ’92, there would be no further Jaguar involvement, the marque bowing out of America following the ’93 Daytona 24 Hours.

Lancia LC2

All the ingredients were there, but Lancia’s Group C bid emerged half-baked. Having enjoyed success in 1982 with its Group 6 LC1 barchettas, the factory followed with the 1983 LC2

The Martini-liveried machine was designed by Giampaolo Dallara, hugely powerful and often formidably quick in qualifying. Unfortunately, one thing missing from the Lancia’s armoury was stamina.

The alliance of Ferrari and Lancia had decades earlier rescued the D50 grand prix car programme from oblivion. But while that had been very much a shotgun union, brought about in part by Lancia’s penury, by the early ’80s the Maranello concern and its Turin collaborator were both under the Fiat umbrella, hence the Ferrari-sourced V8 in the back of the LC2. However, contrary to what is often written about the ‘Tipo 282C’ engine in the carbon and glassfibre body/chassis, it wasn’t merely borrowed from a Ferrari 308 road car and modified. It was a purpose-built unit but with some parts commonality. Unfortunately, the 2.6-litre (3-litre from ’84) unit would prove the car’s Achilles’ heel. Producing as much as 620bhp with its brace of KKK turbos, it had power in abundance but poor reliability.

Making its public bow before the media on February 9, 1983, the model was blooded at the Monza 1000Kms two months later. The Piercarlo Ghinzani/Teo Fabi car claimed pole by almost a second but retired from the race, while the sister machine of Michele Alboreto and Riccardo Patrese came home ninth. The LC2 would be continuously tweaked, the developments focusing on helping it cleave the air more cleanly and on extracting even more power from the engine. But all too often the LC2s would prove fragile, rear half-shafts breaking or the electronic engine management system letting go, before you factor in the V8’s more unruly tendencies. That said, there were high points. It’s just that they occurred when the factory Porsche squad wasn’t around. Indeed, the car pictured here – chassis LC2-84 005 – claimed pole at Le Mans in 1984 when the works 962s were withdrawn following a row with the ACO, and there were wins at Imola in ’83 and at Kyalami the following season when the German factory cars again stayed at home. The final victory came at Spa in ’85, Bob Wollek and Mauro Baldi winning ahead of an army of 962s. Unfortunately, joy was in short supply, the race having ended prematurely following Stefan Bellof’s fatal crash. The works team failed to see out the season and a half-hearted stab in ’86 with a single car for Andrea de Cesaris and Sandro Nannini gave a best of second at Monza. At the Silverstone 1000Kms the car started from pole only to retire with a lack of fuel pressure, and the fan-favourite, flame-spitting Martini Lancias wouldn’t be seen again in period.

While Lancia went rallying, LC2s were run by minnows Team Mussato Action Car and Scuderia Mirabella, but if the factory couldn’t get a car to last, privateers stood no chance. The Veneto Equipe team fielded Lancias as late as 1991 but few noticed. One intriguing spin-off was a V10 Alfa Romeo Grp C car based on the LC2 tub, but it was never raced. Probably for the best.

Nissan R90CK

It should have been its finest hour, but Nissan’s victory in the 1985 Fuji 1000Kms was anything but. Earthquakes and storms in the run up to the event prompted the European teams to sit out the penultimate WEC round en masse…

Kazuyoshi Hoshino, Akira Hagiura and Keiji Matsumoto waded home first in their March-Nissan that weekend, in what became in effect a round of the All-Japan Endurance Championship.

Winning at home was not what Nissan craved, though. It had been involved in Group C since the category’s birth, and often had the right drivers, decent equipment and a good budget. However, what mattered most was victory at Le Mans. Nissan had supplied engines to teams as far back as 1982, but it was only after the marque tapped British constructors that it began to make inroads at the 24 Hours – of a sort.

The link with March Engineering began in 1983, the four-cylinder turbocharged Hoshino Racing 83G appearing at Fuji. Skip to 1986 and the 86V arrived, which was powered by a 60deg V6 based on the 300ZX road car engine. The promise was there but culture clashes between the Japanese paymasters and the European hired help occasionally spilled over – and publicly.

Fast-forward to the end of the decade and Nissan was obliged under the 1989/90 rules to compete in the full series rather than cherry-picking Le Mans and home races only. Nissan became more overt in its involvement, teaming up with Lola for the R89C (T89/10 in Lola speak) which featured a Kevlar and carbon fibre-based monocoque and a twin-turbo ‘VRH35’ 3.5-litre V6. With Milton Keynes-based Nissan Motorsports Europe (NME) competing internationally, and the NISMO squad fielding cars in Japan in addition to providing backup at the local WSPC race (now held at Suzuka rather than Fuji), a major threat was expected.

It didn’t materialise. Nissan did raise its game, but despite encouraging results and a third place finish in the teams’ points table, it didn’t win a single race at international level. Into 1990, Nissan fielded the Lola-designed, NME-honed R90CK but hedged its bets with NISMO also producing its own variations on the theme such as the low-drag R90CP. There would be podium finishes that season, and Mark Blundell put an R90CK on pole at Le Mans (the car pictured here was subsequently heavily reworked by Nova Engineering), before NME was disbanded. However, Nissan’s plan to run at Le Mans only in ’91 was scotched as the FIA insisted it needed to do the entire championship.

Nissan stayed home. It must have been especially galling, therefore, that a Japanese brand finally claimed the top spot that very year. Mazdaspeed got the job done for a surprise Le Mans win with its 787B. Ouch.

Peugeot 905B

Peugeot came to be involved in Group C as a result of the demise of Group B in the World Rally Championship. For maximum publicity, any future racing programme would clearly need to be on-track rather than off-piste…

There had been a very successful dalliance into both the Dakar Rally and Pikes Peak after it had dominated the WRC in 1985-86, but the infrequency of those events led to team manager Jean Todt’s decision to push ahead with a Group C challenger.

Peugeot had prior form in prototypes, having aided the hugely enthusiastic WM squad. However, Gérard Welter and Michel Meunier’s team appeared more interested in being fastest through the speed traps at Le Mans than actually reaching the flag; race distances could often be measured in feet…

The works programme was a more serious proposition. The 905 ‘EV11’ ran for the first time at Montlhéry in June 1990. Stubby, compact and purposeful, and with a near-central driving position within the cockpit, it was designed under André de Cortanze (whose previous work included the ’78 Le Mans-winning Renault Sport Alpine A442B). The carbon-fibre shell was made by Dassault Aviation. Power came from a normally aspirated 3.5-litre V10 with a four-valve-per-cylinder head.

Eager to encourage new-for-1991 750kg ‘Category One’ cars withv3.5-litre F1-type engines, the FIA allowed Peugeot to compete in the final two rounds of the 1990 season without fines for non-appearances in previous races (being a French effort may have helped). Keke Rosberg and Jean-Pierre Jabouille qualified 12th in Montréal, only to retire with fuel pressure issues, and placed 12th in the Mexico finale. Power-to-weight disadvantages compared with the Jaguar and Mercedes entries were obvious; the 905 was 40kg overweight. In 1991 it became clear that Jaguar’s XJR-14 was faster than the 905, and significantly so. The team did pick up a fortuitous win at Suzuka but both entries were out before quarter distance at Le Mans.

Peugeot came back fighting. The 905B, essentially a new car with only the cockpit carried over, arrived at the Nürburgring in August. With a more powerful engine and revised aero including a two-tier rear wing. The new car rounded out 1991 with wins at Magny-Cours and Mexico.

Since only Peugeot and Toyota ran works teams in 1992, the 40th (and final) World Sportscar Championship was largely devoid of racing. Peugeot claimed five wins from the six rounds, with Derek Warwick and Yannick Dalmas sharing the drivers’ title. The duo’s finest hour was Le Mans where they were joined by Mark Blundell for an emphatic victory.

With no real championship in 1993, Peugeot competed just once more with the 905B, and it rounded off its career in the best way possible with a 1-2-3 finish at Le Mans. Eric Hélary, Christophe Bouchut and Geoff Brabham sharing the winning car. A proposed Evo 2 version sadly never raced, since Todt was headhunted by Ferrari.

Taken from Motor Sport July 2012