This book is a brief but affectionate, mainly pictorial panorama of twenty-odd years of the British Touring Car Championship, from the anarchical 1960s and early 1970s of flared wheel-arches, lifting wheels and smoking tires, through the Group 1 years when the rule-makers tried to make the cars look standard and as a result, slow them down. This had the classic effect on racecar builders, who were not worth their salt unless they could get around the restrictions. The eventual results were faster cars than before, which evolved into the tarmac-melting, fire-breathing turbo powered front-runners of the late 1980s. The story stops at the point where the rule-makers tried another clampdown as the final decade of the 20th century dawned.

The first official British Saloon Car Championship was held in 1958, so 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of this ever-competitive, highly popular form of racing, now called the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC). This book will be a photographic sweep over the entire 50 years (with a preamble about pre-1958 saloon car racing), presented in the style of our Formula 1 in Camera titles, using as much color as possible.   As the overview below shows, there have been plenty of well-known and exciting cars over the years, and numerous notable drivers too, including World Champions such as Mike Hawthorn, Jim Clark and Graham Hill and colourful characters such as Gerry Marshall, Barrie 'Whizzo' Williams and Tony Lanfranchi.