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• Deutsche Tourenwagen Musik: DTM Orchestra Gives America a Taste of Things to Come [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 28 March 2013

  

  In the last month-and-a-half or so, we’ve brought you a couple videos chronicling the German Touring Car Championship (DTM) through the years. The first was a tribute to the series’ Group A golden era of the late-1980s and early-1990s. The second video looked at the Class 1 era of the mid-‘90s, where the cars were arguably more technology-packed than any racecars seen before or since. Now, we bring you a video about today’s DTM – which is contested by silhouette cars patterned after the BMW M3, Mercedes-Benz C-Class Coupe and Audi RS5 – with an extra musical accompaniment.

  But this present-day DTM vid has some extra significance, for it was earlier this week that ITR (the sanctioning body for DTM), Grand-Am and IMSA (which, along with the American Le Mans Series, will join forces next year to form United SportsCar Racing) signed an agreement that will see the formation of a North American DTM series. The parties involved say the new championship will be open to DTM cars, GT500 class SuperGT cars (since it has also adapted DTM rules), and any new cars that will be built by American manufacturers (*cough*next gen Camaro, next gen Mustang and the rumored SRT ‘Cuda*cough*). Expect the series to kick off in 2015 or 2016, with both standalone events and during United SportsCar and Izod IndyCar Series weekends. Needless to say, we are counting the days, kids.

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• When Skynet Met NASCAR: DTM’s Class 1 Era [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 14 March 2013

  

  About a month ago, we showed you a video tribute to the golden age of the German Touring Car Championship (DTM). It was a period where modified but still-production based BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes, Audis and others went door handle to door handle in front of an enthusiastic worldwide audience. However, beginning with the 1994 season, series organizers fully implemented the FIA’s Class 1 touring car regulations and, if you ask us, the results were just as magical (but in a different sort of way).

  Unlike the earlier Group A touring cars, the Class 1 models merely looked like their street legal Alfa Romeo 155, Mercedes-Benz C-Class and Opel Calibra counterparts. Underneath, they were pure racing cars with naturally-aspirated 2.5L V6s that revved to well over 12,000 rpm, sequential transmissions and, in the case of the Alfas and Opels, all-wheel drive. And if that wasn’t enough, they were crammed full of cutting edge tech, most of which had, ironically, been banned from Formula 1 with the start of the 1994 season. Gizmos like ABS, traction control, active suspension, four-wheel steering, active aerodynamics and even active ballast became the norm. Naturally, costs exploded, particularly after the series went global in 1996 under the name ITC. Manufacturers lost interest, and the FIA was under pressure to keep it from outshining F1 (much like it had been with the World Sportscar Championship in 1992), so the plug was pulled at the end of ’96. But while this series that was equal parts NASCAR, Can-Am and Formula 1 (with a sprinkling of BattleBots thrown in for good measure) may be gone, it sure as Scheiße ain’t forgotten.

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• The Golden Age of DTM Racing [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 11 February 2013

  

  Some of the most exciting racing (and coolest racecars) on earth in the late 1980s and early 1990s occurred in the DTM (Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft, literally German Touring Car Championship). Cars like the original E30-based BMW M3, the Cosworth-massaged 16-valve Mercedes-Benz 190E, and the fat-and-happy Audi V8 Quattro were just some of the tasty tintops that did battle on such storied venues as the Hockenheimring, the Nürburgring (including the mighty Nordschleife), and the AVUS.

  Aptly-named YouTuber DTMEnthusiast captures the go-go spirit of this remarkable era in racing in this fantastic six-minute, one-second production. The soundtrack selection’s lyrics may be unintelligible to the average Amerikaner (The approximate translation of the title and chorus is “Damn Long Time Ago.”), but it’s an absolutely perfect accompaniment to the slow-motion kerb-hopping, powersliding and champagne spraying. If watching this doesn’t make you immediately start trolling eBay, Craigslist and all the rest for a roadgoing BMW, Audi or Mercedes-Benz DTM homologation model to call your own(All three were sold new in the U.S. at one point or another.), consult your doctor immediately, because you might be dead.

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• The Top 15 Hottest Female Race Car Drivers

  In Featured, Lists, Motorsports / By Tom Anderson / 11 March 2011

  

  Well over 95% of motorsports history has been made by men. This is hardly surprising, given the temperamental nature of the machines, the immense physical demands needed to wrestle a car around a track on six-inch wide bias-ply tires and no downforce (or, in some rectum-dilating cases, lift), and the overall high probability of severe disfigurement or death. Not the most welcoming environment for men or women.

  Eventually, though, racing became a tamer, more sanitized sport. Concurrently, attitudes about gender and the role(s) of women changed, paving the way for pioneers like Louise Smith, Pat Moss, Denise McCluggage, Shirley Muldowney, Janet Guthrie and Michele Mouton to shatter the glass ceilings that hovered over motorsports. Today it seems more women than ever are donning helmets and dropping the hammer, however – men being men – we tend to fixate on how they look more than how they drive. (We’re sorry; please direct all anger and venom at Darwin.) What else would compel us to compile the following list?

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