Eight racing cars that never raced

Alfa Romeo SE 048SP

There was a time when pretty much everyone built a Group C car. Porsche, Jaguar, Sauber, Mazda and Peugeot might steal the headlines, but Ford, Aston Martin, Lancia and more also got in on the act.

When the regulations changed to incorporate high-revving F1-style 3.5-litre engines, Lancia bowed out, due to be replaced by stablemates Alfa Romeo. Catchily called the Alfa Romeo SE 048SP, this bright red machine has even been to the Goodwood Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard. It was powered by a 3.5-litre V10 originally, with talk of replacing it with a Ferrari V12 should development have got that far. The original engine was developed for the stillborn, but bonkers, Alfa 164 Procar, and potentially for a Ligier F1 car with around 620PS (462kW), but the programme eventually fizzled out. Money would be diverted to Lancia’s successful WRC programme, and the development of the DTM and BTCC-winning Alfa Romeo 155 touring car.

Porsche LMP2000

After Porsche won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1998 it seemed to have quit the sport. But in the background it had been building a replacement car, to the new top class LMP regulations. The car was called the 9R3, and was set to race in 1999.

Eventually this car, with a flat-six from the road-going 911, was cancelled, as it was deemed too heavy and had numerous flaws due to the serious cooling needs of an engine not originally designed for racing. But the development didn’t end there. Picking up a V10, that it had designed in 1992 for a Footwork F1 car, Porsche started work on a car for the following season, called the LMP2000. The 9R3’s chassis was pretty much unaltered to become the LMP2000, with new suspension and engine mounts, and the car began testing to good response.

Then the project was canned. Porsche has never given a reason for the cancellation, but it’s pretty safe to assume a mixture of cash being diverted to the development of the Cayenne and not wanting to compete against future VAG stablemates Audi. The car wasn’t seen in public until the 2018 Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard.

Peugeot 908 Hybrid4

Peugeot finished second, third and fourth in the 2011 Le Mans 24 Hours. The Peugeot 908 (also known as the 90X) was slightly slower than Audi’s R18, but more efficient, with the trio of Sébastien Bourdais, Simon Pagenaud and Pedro Lamy so close in the final hour of the race, that the organisers called off the traditional final parade lap and told the teams to keep racing to the bitter end.

The following season, regulations changed, allowing for hybrid cars to race for victory, and heralding a new era for LMP1 racing that would last until 2020. Peugeot developed a replacement for the 908, called the 908 Hybrid4. In fact Peugeot had been the first company to show a hybrid LMP car, with its 908 HY showcar that ran in 2008. For 2012 Peugeot would enter the brand new World Endurance Championship as the reigning champions of the ILMC (its forebear), alongside Audi and a future challenge from Toyota.

The 908 Hybrid4 was in fact so far down the development track (pun intended) it had been showcased at the Geneva Motor Show a year before, and the team had headed to Sebring ready for a pre-season test when, out of the blue apparently, Peugeot hierarchy cancelled the whole project. Under pressure after a €400 million loss, the French marque was teetering near bankruptcy and decided to end its motorsport association rather than continue, depriving us of a potentially barnstorming first WEC season.

McLaren MP4-18

The 2002 season was a disappointing one for McLaren. Having been a champion team in 1999 and been the only competition for Ferrari in the following two seasons, the Woking team finished third in the Constructors’ Championship in 2002, recording a solitary win for David Coulthard at Monaco. So Adrian Newey set about creating a totally new platform for the 2003 season, working with former Arrows designer Mike Coughlan.

The plan was for a developed version of the unsuccessful MP4-17 (called the MP4-17D) to race for the first few races of 2003, before the new 18 would arrive. That was the plan, but the new car crashed several times in testing, for a variety of reasons that were never disclosed, setting the programme back. Eventually McLaren decided enough was enough and, encouraged by a pair of early season wins for the old chassis, decided to soldier on with the MP4-17 for the rest of 2003 (finishing third... again). The MP4-18 was developed into the MP4-19, a car so horrendously poor that a dramatically revised MP4-19B was launched mid-season to replace it.

Lancia ECV

When Group B started to get a little bit too much for the FIA to stomach, the solution from the powers that be was to replace the formula with a new one: Group S. Group S cars would have had less power – limited to 300PS (225kW) – but the homologation rules were relaxed, from 200 road cars to 10, in order to try and bring out more innovative and interesting designs. There are in fact five cars that were designed for Group S: Audi’s 002 Quattro, Toyota’s 222D, Opel’s Kadette Rallye 4x4, Lada (honestly)’s Samara S-Proto and Lancia’s Delta S4 replacing ECV.

ECV stood for “Experimental Composite Vehicle” and was designed with a 1.8-litre twin-turbocharged engine producing over 600PS (448kW). This was to be reined in to the required 300PS to compete. The body was made of a special composite of Kevlar and carbon-fibre to save weight and add rigidity, tipping the scales at just 930kg. Featuring a stunning new red Martini livery it looked a lot like the S4, while underneath being completely different.

In this case, rather than the project being canned, the whole class was. With the FIA completely spooked by Group B’s deadly final season, the WRC’s top class was scaled back to the lower Group A regulations. Much to the annoyance of many inside the paddock, who thought the Group S cars much safer than Group B, but a lot more exciting than Group A.

Deltawing IndyCar

The DeltaWing raced at Le Mans, and it raced on for several seasons in the American Le Mans Series and following United Sportscar Championship (now IMSA), with both open-topped, and hideous closed-cockpit versions. But that was a second version of the DeltaWing concept. In fact, far from being a sportscar, had history gone slightly differently, the original DeltaWing would have been the spec chassis for IndyCar.

The Dallara chassis used by IndyCar (and its predecessor the Indy Racing League) was very long in the tooth in the late-2000s. Series organisers decided it would be replaced in 2012 with a brand new chassis, and put a tender out for designs. Engineer Ben Bowlby, working with various partners, including Panoz and Chip Ganassi, developed a unique, revolutionary concept for a racing car, with two tiny front wheels together, and two bigger ones at the rear. Stabilised by a single vertical fin, these cars were expected to be able to run closer and produce potentially better racing.

Sadly for us, IndyCar went for a new design from Dallara, a car that would eventually become the DW12 that is used to this day, and we were robbed of the ingenuity of seeing an entire fleet of DeltaWings racing.

Toyota TF110

When F1’s regulations changed drastically for 2009, reducing the amount of aerodynamic devices that had begun to proliferate on the cars, in order to try and both make them look smoother and allow them to follow each other closer. Toyota sprung from being nowhere-behind-the-best (it finished fifth in 2008, sixth in 2007) to regular pole position contenders and podium finishers.

Toyota also decided to focus a lot of manpower on the 2010 car, building on the new successes found in 2009, developing the TF110 and building two cars. While neither was ever seen publicly, the TF110 apparently had an incredibly complex new diffuser design, and an early version of what would come to be known as the “F-duct”, a device controlled by the driver to reduce drag on the rear wing that would become commonplace through the 2010 season.

But Toyota chose to cancel its F1 project at the end of the 2009 season, so, other than a shakedown run by Kazuki Nakajima, it never ran in public. The never-to-be-seen Stefan GP team bought the car to try and compete in 2011, but would be unsuccessful in attempts to reach the grid.

Volkswagen Polo WRC

Volkswagen’s WRC project was wildly successful. It lasted only four season, but resulted in 43 wins from 53 rallies, 87 podiums and 12 titles (four each Drivers’, Co-Drivers’, and Manufacturers’). When new regulations came in for 2017, set to make the cars faster, more aggressive and altogether more exciting, it was expected that Volkswagen would continue, but hopefully face a bit more competition with Toyota returning and Hyundai and Ford stepping up their respective programmes.

A new car was not only developed by Volkswagen, but tested by former champion Marcus Gronholm and revealed to the world as the new contender. But then the emissions scandal hit, and VW canned the project, barely a few weeks after unveiling the car. There was talk of Polo WRCs being sold to privateers to run, with several attempts made to rally them through 2017, but all came to nothing. Volkswagen would return to the sport, but with a car to the lower R5 regulations, to be sold to private entries, rather than a full title challenger.

Alfa Romeo image by Roberto Motta, Porsche image by Adam Beresford, McLaren and WRC images courtesy of Motorsport Images, Toyota image by Morio.