In the mid 1970s, big banger sportscar racing (and hence Le Mans) was in the doldrums. In the heady days of the 1960s, Ferrari, Porsche and Ford battled it out for supremacy, creating legends out of cars like the Porsche 917, Ford GT40 and Ferrari 512. However the rules were changed in the early 70s to favour more faceless prototypes and as a result the public lost interest. The FIA’s solution was Group5, and the idea was that you’d have production car based racecars which the buying public would recognise. But underneath the rules would be sufficiently free so that the stupendous speeds of the old prototypes would be retained.
Well that was the plan, anyway. Somewhere along the line, Group5 racecars began to hardly resemble their underlying production cars at all. And for that, you can blame Porsche 🙂
