I loved British Touring Car Racing. Regular cars turned into race cars, with dashboards and lights and the whole nine yards, with drivers working like a wheelman after a bank heist. Screaming engines, sharp driving, spectacular side-by-side moments and genuine fury between drivers that you could feel through your television screen made for some excellent viewing when one is stuck at home from school, sick and confined to the couch and TNN was feeling rather worldly. I never thought I’d want a Honda Accord, or Toyota anything from the early 1990s, or any of the other cars that ran this series, but when I saw them skating through the grass with tire rub marks on the doors and drivers throwing the V-symbol and middle fingers to each other while screaming some vile things at each other, I knew that this was the racing series for me. It was. And it’s a shame that it really didn’t take off in America with the North American Touring Car Championship.

What you’ll see below is a clip from the fifth round race at Brands Hatch, in the southeast of England during the wild 1992 season. Straight off of the bat, you will take notice of three cars: two Toyota Carinas (read: Toyota Celica-based sedans) that are driven by Andy Rouse and Will Hoy, and the Vauxhall Cavalier of John Cleland. Cleland, you might recognize…his middle finger to  Steve Soper during the final race at Silverstone that year is one of British Touring Car’s most infamous moments in history. Not that any of these drivers were saints…bump-to-pass has nothing whatsoever on a bunch of competitive touring car drivers who are seeing the red mist. For several laps, the two Toyotas and the Vauxhall run like the Blue Angels, inches from each other. You want doorhandle-to-doorhandle? There are moments where a piece of paper might be the only thing fitting between two cars.

Maybe racing like this was never meant for America. Odd to think, but some safety freak would lose their minds after one race and insurance companies would put a stop to that in half a second!