The first World Touring Car Championship ran concurrently with the long-established European Touring Car Championship using Group A regulations. Rounds were held across Europe and at international venues including Bathurst in Australia, Calder Park Raceway, Wellington in New Zealand, and Mount Fuji in Japan. European factory teams from Ford, BMW, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo entered, though Alfa withdrew after the European rounds. The series was mired in controversy when leading BMW Motorsport and Eggenberger Motorsport teams, competing under a mutual non-protest arrangement in Europe, faced scrutiny from local Australian teams unhappy with liberal Group A interpretations. The Eggenberger Ford Sierra RS500 cars were protested and disqualified from the Bathurst 1000 results.
The championship was provisionally awarded to Eggenberger Ford drivers Klaus Ludwig and Klaus Niedzwiedz. When the Bathurst disqualification was finalised in March 1988, Roberto Ravaglia of Schnitzer Motorsport in a BMW M3 was declared champion. The series ran only that one season; the FIA, reportedly concerned that a strong touring car world championship would draw money away from Formula One, declined to sanction further editions.
In 2001 the FIA revived the European Touring Car Championship as a precursor to a new world series, initially incorporating Italian Superturismo as the FIA European Super Touring Championship with a Super Production support class. By 2002 the format evolved into the FIA European Touring Car Championship using Super 2000 regulations, a technical package that produced close and highly popular racing dominated by Alfa Romeo and BMW and broadcast live on Eurosport.
At manufacturer request, the ETCC was elevated to world championship status beginning with the 2005 season as the revived WTCC, retaining Super 2000 and Diesel 2000 technical regulations. Andy Priaulx of BMW dominated the opening three seasons, taking drivers and manufacturers titles in 2005, 2006, and 2007. In 2008 Yvan Muller won the title in his SEAT Leon TDI, marking the first FIA world championship in any category won by a diesel-powered car. Gabriele Tarquini repeated the SEAT Leon TDI double in 2009.
Chevrolet entered the championship in 2010 with its Cruze model and began a period of sustained dominance. Muller became world champion that year, then retained the title in 2011 helping Chevrolet to a clean sweep of drivers and manufacturers titles. Rob Huff took the 2012 drivers title as Chevrolet swept both titles again. Technical regulations opened to 1.6-litre turbocharged engines in 2011, and the larger 2.0-litre gasoline and diesel engines were outlawed in 2012. In 2014 a new TC1 car specification was introduced with larger wings and more power.
The WTCC raced at circuits across a wide geographic spread including venues in Argentina, Morocco, Hungary, Germany, Russia, France, Portugal, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Japan, China, Thailand, and Qatar. Former venues included locations in Brazil, Great Britain, Italy, Macau, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States.
Following the 2017 season an agreement was reached between the FIA, Eurosport Events, and the TCR promoter WSC to merge the WTCC into the TCR regulatory framework, creating the FIA World Touring Car Cup from 2018. The transition ended the WTCC as a standalone world championship after thirteen seasons of the modern format.
The WTCC was notable for the breadth of manufacturers it attracted and for pioneering diesel-powered world championship racing through the SEAT and Chevrolet years. Its Super 2000 and TC1 regulations produced close, wheel-to-wheel racing that built strong television audiences on Eurosport. Drivers including Andy Priaulx, Yvan Muller, Gabriele Tarquini, Rob Huff, Jose Maria Lopez, and Norbert Michelisz built careers defined by the series. The championship's transition into the TCR format acknowledged the cost efficiencies and competitive parity that TCR regulations offered compared to the increasingly expensive manufacturer-homologated Super 2000 and TC1 machinery.