The European Touring Car Challenge, as the series was initially named, was created in 1963 by Willy Stenger under FIA auspices. Cars competed under Group 2 Improved Touring Car regulations, which permitted a wide variety of production vehicles from different size and engine displacement classes to race together, ranging from the small Fiat 600 and Mini Cooper to the large Jaguar Mark 2 and Mercedes-Benz 300SE. The inaugural 1963 champion was German driver Peter Nöcker in a Jaguar, with rounds held at venues including the Nürburgring, Brands Hatch, Zandvoort, and Zolder.
In 1968 the regulations were broadened to allow Group 5 Special Touring Cars to participate, though this provision lasted only two years. From 1970 the series was renamed the European Touring Car Championship, and the original Group 2 framework, now with more liberal technical freedoms, returned as the primary category.
The 1973 oil crisis sharply reduced entry levels through 1974 and 1975. Factory teams returned in 1977, with BMW's 3.0 CSL and the Ford Capri RS remaining the most competitive machinery of that era. The early 1980s brought the transition from Groups 1 and 2 to the new Group N and Group A classifications under a broader FIA reorganisation. Teams from BMW and Alfa Romeo contested the Group A championship alongside machinery prepared by Tom Walkinshaw Racing, whose Jaguar XJS and Rover 3500 Vitesse proved formidable against the BMW 635 CSi, turbocharged Volvo 240T, and the Ford Sierra Cosworth.
By the late 1980s the escalation of competition costs had grown severe. The FIA had permitted homologation of Evolution models, leading to highly specialised machines such as the BMW M3 Evolution and Ford Sierra RS500 dominating competition. The series was cancelled after the 1988 season, with a one-off World Touring Car Championship held in 1987 having further complicated the motorsport landscape and drained factory budgets.
During the period between the two ETCC eras, international touring car activity continued through national Supertouring championships. The FIA organised the Super Touring World Cup between 1993 and 1995, and in 1996 promoted the German DTM to the International Touring Car Championship (ITC), before escalating costs again ended that series after two seasons.
The ETCC was revived in 2000 when the Italian Superturismo Championship was elevated to European status as Euro STC. The field drew primarily from Italian teams and drivers, though entries from other national championships were also represented. The first season featured six Italian rounds plus events in Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovenia, with Fabrizio Giovanardi taking the inaugural title.
In 2001 the series was renamed the FIA European Super Touring Championship, with a secondary Super Production class running alongside the main Super Touring category. The season produced intense battles among Alfa Romeo's Giovanardi and Nicola Larini and Honda driver Gabriele Tarquini, who despite winning nine of twenty races lost the title to Giovanardi due to retirements.
A significant technical transition came in 2002, when Super Touring regulations gave way to the new Super 2000 class. The rebranded FIA ETCC attracted entries from Alfa Romeo, BMW, Volvo, and SEAT, with Alfa Romeo winning the first two Super 2000 championships through Giovanardi in 2002 and Tarquini in 2003. Andy Priaulx claimed the final ETCC title in 2004 driving for BMW. Extensive Eurosport live broadcasts during this era built a substantial television audience for the series.
The commercial and sporting success of the revived ETCC, combined with its growing international television reach, led the FIA to elevate the series to World Touring Car Championship status beginning in 2005. The ETCC name subsequently passed to a European Touring Car Cup, a single-event competition running until 2017, which served as a showcase for national Super 2000 champions from across Europe.
The ETCC served as the primary European stage for touring car manufacturers and drivers across three decades, hosting factory efforts from BMW, Alfa Romeo, Jaguar, Ford, Volvo, Honda, and SEAT. Its 2002–2004 Super 2000 era directly prefigured the WTCC technical regulations, making the ETCC the immediate ancestor of the most successful international touring car series of the early 2000s.