The inaugural World Touring Car Championship was open to Group A Touring Cars and ran concurrently with the long-running European Touring Car Championship. Rounds were held outside Europe at Bathurst and Calder Park Raceway in Australia — where Calder used a combined circuit of the road course and a newly constructed NASCAR speedway — as well as Wellington in New Zealand and Mount Fuji in Japan.
The championship was supported by the factory European teams of Ford, BMW, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo, the last of which withdrew following the European rounds. A dispute arose between BMW Motorsport and Eggenberger Motorsport, with the two leading teams operating under a mutual non-protest arrangement. When the series reached Australia, local teams objected to the Europeans' interpretation of the Group A rules and filed protests against the Eggenberger cars, which were subsequently disqualified from the Bathurst 1000 results.
The championship was provisionally awarded to West German Eggenberger Ford Sierra RS500 drivers Klaus Ludwig and Klaus Niedzwiedz. When their Bathurst disqualification was confirmed in March 1988, results were finalised and Roberto Ravaglia, driving a BMW M3 for Schnitzer Motorsport, was declared champion. The Entrants Championship was won by the Eggenberger Texaco Ford No. 7 entry.
The WTCC lasted only one season. The FIA, in part motivated by concerns that the championship would divert revenue from Formula One, ceased sanctioning it. A silhouette formula was announced for 1988 — using specialist chassis carrying production-car bodywork powered by the outgoing 1.5-litre Formula One turbo regulations — but manufacturers declined to participate and the project was abandoned. Only one car, based on an Alfa Romeo 164 with a 3.5-litre V10 engine, was completed before the concept was dropped.
The European Touring Car Championship was revived in 2001 with FIA support. In 2001, the Italian Superturismo Championship became the FIA European Super Touring Championship. In 2002, this evolved into a new FIA European Touring Car Championship using Super 2000 rules, which was dominated by Alfa Romeo and BMW and broadcast live by Eurosport.
At the request of interested manufacturers, the ETCC was elevated to the WTCC beginning with the 2005 season, retaining Super 2000 and Diesel 2000 regulations. Andy Priaulx and his BMW 320i were the dominant pairing in the opening three seasons, winning the Drivers' and Manufacturers' Championships in 2005, 2006, and 2007.
In 2008, Yvan Muller won the title after Race 1 in Macau in his SEAT León TDI — the first time an FIA-sanctioned world championship in any category was won by a diesel-powered racing car. The SEAT León TDI won both championships again in 2009, this time driven by Gabriele Tarquini.
From 2010, Chevrolet dominated through its Cruze model. Yvan Muller became World Champion in 2010, followed by a second drivers' title in 2011 in which his two teammates finished second and third, giving Chevrolet a clean sweep of both championships. In 2012, Rob Huff took the Drivers' title while Chevrolet again swept both championships.
The series held rounds across the globe including Argentina, Morocco, Hungary, Germany, Russia, France, Portugal, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Japan, China, Thailand, and Qatar, with former venues in Brazil, Great Britain, Italy, Macau, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States.
Technical rules were modified in 2011 to permit 1.6-litre turbocharged gasoline engines; the 2.0-litre gasoline and turbodiesel engines were banned from 2012. New car regulations designated TC1 were introduced in 2014, featuring larger aerodynamic devices and increased engine power. The prior 1.6-litre turbo cars were reclassified as TC2 for 2014 and dropped entirely for 2015.
WTCC Super 2000 cars used 1.6-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engines producing approximately 380 bhp, fitted with 18-inch wheels and large front and rear aerodynamic devices. Cost control was a central theme of the technical regulations. Variable valve timing, variable intake geometry, ABS brakes, and traction control were all prohibited.
From 2010, points were awarded on the FIA scale shared with Formula One and the FIA World Rally Championship. Between 2005 and 2009 the championship used its own bespoke points scale, as did the inaugural 1987 season.
For 2018, the series adopted TCR regulations and merged with the TCR International Series to form the World Touring Car Cup (WTCR). The WTCR did not carry World Championship status, as official factory entries were not permitted, though some drivers and teams received manufacturer backing.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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