There are essentially three kinds of race cars. There are purpose-built racers like open-wheel formula cars from F1 and Indy, silhouette race cars that are essentially the same underneath, but skinned as cars they’re meant to race, and then there are production-based race cars.
Updated April 2022: Street-legal race cars are the pride and joy of anyone lucky enough to be able to afford them. While some manufacturers create high-performance versions of already legal vehicles, some make vehicles that are race cars in production car shells. We’ve updated this list to include even more great examples of barely-street-legal race cars.
The idea behind production-based racing is “Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday.” The cars you see on the track should have a direct connection to the cars on the street. Although, racing and production cars have different priorities. Automakers need to make a car that people can afford and that are usable on the road. The racing divisions want to squeeze every ounce of power, grip, and aerodynamics that they can out of their cars and comfort is of no concern.
To keep a reign on the excess of the racing divisions a seemingly obvious rule came to be. Manufacturers were required to produce their production race car. But like a kid negotiating exactly what constitutes ‘eating their broccoli’, manufacturers would make limited runs of special production cars that were a little more than race cars with license plates.
Here are 25 barely street-legal race cars for the road.
25 Panoz Esperante GTR-1
Only two of these street-legal bad boys were ever produced, and the Panoz Esperante GTR-1 shared no mechanical relation to the standard street-legal version of the Esperante. Instead, the two street-legal versions of the GTR-1 were built to satisfy the homologation requirements of the Le Mans race.
The Panoz Esperante GTR-1 uses a Ford 6.0L V8 that produces 600 horsepower and 500 lb-ft of torque. As a result, the road-going cars can hit 60 in just about 5 seconds. Truly the GTR-1 wasn’t hiding the fact that it’s meant to be a race car, not a street-legal car.
24 Subaru Impreza 22B STI
Subaru built the super version of the Impreza WRX STI, better known as the 22B STI, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Subaru and its third manufacturer’s title for the FIA World Rally Championship. The result was a limited run of Impreza 22Bs that sold out in less than 48 hours.
The Impreza 22B STI was tuned and fitted with performance parts. While it technically had a max horsepower rating of 276, it was famous for pushing much higher numbers. The Impreza 22B STI is so iconic in the JDM world that any remaining models sell for well over six digits.
23 Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution
Well before the Lancer Evo, there was another Evolution vehicle at Mitsubishi. That’s the off-roading Evo beast, the Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution. The Pajero Evo was built specifically to tackle the Dakar Rally, and to achieve that goal, 2500 units were produced to homologate the vehicle.
The Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution featured wide fender and wheel flares, as well as hood scoops and air vents to allow for the 3.5L V6 to efficiently make 275 horsepower. While not overwhelmingly fast, the Pajero is an SUV race car that’s wonderfully street-legal.
22 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona/1970 Plymouth Superbird
NASCAR wasn’t always Charger and Camry skins pulled over a racing chassis. Once upon a time, stock car racing had to be based on actual stock cars. But the demands of racing and the demands of production were getting more and more at odds in the quest for speed around America’s biggest ovals. NASCAR’s owner and founder Big Bill France Sr. was building superspeedways like Talladega to make NASCAR the fastest racing on earth.
But the big, blocky muscle cars of the sixties weren’t up to the aerodynamic challenge. So manufacturers started making special runs of their cars with aero body kits to accommodate these two and a half-mile ovals. What started as smoothed grills and long rear windows reached the height of crazy with the 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona and its sibling 1970 Superbird.
Eighteen inches were added to the cone-shaped nose complete with popup headlights that were not needed at the track. Although, at speeds for the first time exceeding 200 mph, something had to plant the rear of the car down and that came in the form of a tall spoiler.
Just over five hundred street versions of the Charger Daytona were made and 1,350 Superbirds, based on the Plymouth Road Runner, followed. Most of them featured the 440 Magnum engine with only two dozen carrying the more powerful 426, they were not dealership hits at the time. They were built for a single purpose and that wasn’t fitting into a grocery store parking lot. Now, however, they’ve become coveted collector’s items.
21 1993 Dauer Porsche 962
In the 80s, the International Motor Sports Association ruled sports car racing with the Camel GT series. The top of that mark was the Group C prototype class, purpose-built technological wonders that would speed down the 3.7-mile long Mulsanne straight reaching speeds close to 250 mph.
The king of this era was the Porsche 956/962, with most of Porsche’s record 19 Le Mans wins coming from this era. Even better, it was a customer race car. Anyone with the money could buy one from Porsche and go race it. But other manufacturers spending big money to beat the ubiquitous Porsche eventually drained the fields and Group C ended as sports car racing returned to production-based cars.
The 962 racer Dauer Racing wasn’t just going to walk away from one of the most successful racing cars ever made. Did they want a race car based on a road car? Well then, they’d make a road car out of the 962. There were enough 962s lying around from other privateers that they were able to make the homologation requirements and the 962 returned to Le Mans in 1994 and won.
The Dauer 962 is barely a street-legal car. It has the same wild engine and suspension, but with street tires and whatever that was needed to pass inspection, this was otherwise a full-blooded 251 mph race car you could put a license plate on.
20 1982 Lancia Stratos 037 Stradale
You’ve no doubt heard of the little Lancia Stratos, the rally fighter built from the Ferrari and Fiat parts bin, but that’s not the only monster created at the Lancia Lab. Group B rally racing was an exercise in excess. Down from the 5000 production cars necessary for Group A, Group B only required 200. And there were no restrictions on turbo boost. The result was some of the scariest fire breathers the logging trails had ever seen.
The Stratos 037 was Lancia’s first entrance into the madhouse. The car came in at just over half a ton with a supercharged four-cylinder engine putting out over 200 hp in street trim. It was surrounded by heavy-duty suspension units that could absorb the rough rally roads and keep the car pointed down the track.
The sharp little two-seaters would prove to be the last of its kind. After the rear-wheel-drive monster won the WRC championship in 1983 it would be all-wheel drive cars on top from then on. As a result, the angular mid-engine Stratos gave way to the equally fast but not nearly as crazy as the Delta Integrale.
19 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO
Sometimes you don’t bother to be coy about the fact that you’re only building your car to qualify for the production series. The O in GTO stands for Omologato, Italian for homologated. In other words, these are the exact number of Ferraris you said we needed to make. In this case, Ferrari wanted to win the FIA Group 3 production class, and they weren’t afraid to use the term ‘production’ lightly to do it.
Widely regarded as one of the best sports cars ever (barely) produced, the thirty-nine 250 GTOs are coveted collector prizes. So coveted that one sold at auction in 2012 for a record-breaking $38,115,000.
Built off the chassis of the earlier short wheelbase (SWB) Ferrari 250 GT, placed in a tube frame, and then given the Tipo 168/62 3.0 liter V12 from the Le Mans-winning Testa Rosa, the 39 250 GTOs built between 1962 and 1964 didn’t even pretend to be much more than a race car you could drive on the road. And you couldn’t even get one unless Enzo himself liked you. All the sales had to be approved by the Ferrari boss.
18 1980 Renault R5 Turbo
To understand how crazy the R5 Turbo is, you have to consider where the car came from. Renault in the 80s was not a performance brand. In America, Renault was a partner brand to AMC, which would not survive the decade. One of the vehicles that Renault offered was the humble Renault 5 known as Le Car in the states, a small hatchback that got 35 mpg with all of 55 hp. While the odd little hatchback did have some racing success in the 70s Champion Sports Plug Challenge, no one really thought of it as anything other than an alternative to a Civic or Corolla.
But Renault wanted to go Group 4 (soon to become B) rally racing. They started with the Le Car. They replaced the humble 55-hp engine with a 1.4 liter 158 hp turbocharged engine. Not content there, they took that engine and put it where the back seats of the Le Car used to be. Massive 80s box flares covered much larger tires that now put down power through the rear wheels instead of the front.
At the time this made it the most powerful French car being made. For those in the know, it’s a rare gem. In the late 90s, Renault would revisit the idea of taking their Econo hatch and putting a more powerful engine where a rear seat would go with the Clio V6 Sport.
17 1969 Camaro ZL1
The ZL1 moniker probably looks familiar if you’re keeping up with the various special models of modern throwback muscle cars. The top line Camaro wears the ZL1 badge, but where does that come from? It turns out that it’s actually a quirk that started from how dealers could order their cars.
From the rather unexciting named Chevrolet Office Production Order (COPO) came something insane. The idea of COPO was for law enforcement or taxi fleets to order cars with engine combinations that weren’t part of the stock line. Fred Gibb of Gibbs Chevrolet discovered something in the COPO options, the aluminum 427 V8 engine being used in the Trans Am racing series. Gibbs was able to use COPO to sell Camaros with full-on racing engines in them. While there was a road-legal 427 available normally, the aluminum was more powerful and weighed as much as the stock 327.
Pumping out north of 500 hp (reported as 435 hp) it was the fastest car Chevrolet produced for years afterward. Only 69 of these thinly disguised race cars made it to the customer’s hands, but its legend was enough for Chevy to dust off the ZL1 badge for the hot version of the current Camaro.
16 1984 Audi Ur Quattro Sport
For most people, the Audi Quattro is the symbol of Group B. By far the most successful, the flame-throwing Quattro introduced the idea of all-wheel-drive performance cars. While it seems obvious now, the idea that you could make a fast rally car that drove all the wheels was revolutionary and not everyone was on board. That is until the Quattro started winning races. After winning in 1985, all-wheel-drive ruled rallying from then on.
The Quattro sport was shorter than the stock Audi 80, replacing all the panels with box flared carbon-kevlar for lighter weight and replacing the normal engine with a smaller but turbocharged inline five-cylinder that pumped out 302 horsepower.
The car was a huge success racking up rally wins across the globe and with Mićhele Mouton at the wheel of the Quattro won Pike’s Peak Hill Climb in 1985. Sadly, the Quattro Sport wasn’t available in the United States, but some grey market imports made their way inside. For any Group B collector, this is the car to get. It’s the car that changed rally racing forever.
15 McLaren F1 GTR
Sometimes there is a patient zero for the madness that is about to ensue. For the 1990s GT series, that’s the McLaren F1 GTR. The McLaren F1 was already a crazy car. The F1 was designed to be the fastest production car in the world as a celebration of McLaren’s Formula One success. Powered by a naturally aspirated BMW V12, the road-going F1 was capable of up to 240 mph. And that was the base car.
In the wake of the collapse of the World Sportscar Championship, sports car racing was looking for a new top field. GT1 featured Ferrari F40s and Porsche Turbos, but owners were looking at the already fast F1 into sports car racing. Unlike the rest of the cars on this list, since the F1 began life insane, it didn’t take much to make it ready for racing. First, it needed a few body modifications to glue the fast car to the ground. Then, they had to detune the engine so that it qualified for racing. The base F1 was so crazy, they had to make it less crazy to go racing.
It was a huge success that would start an arms race that would fill this list with increasingly insane limited edition cars.
14 1992 Ford Escort RS Cosworth
It’s hard for Americans to imagine a desirable Escort. What is a forgettable compact Ford in the United States, however, is a desirable hot rod in England. In a lot of ways, Ford Europe is a completely different company than its American version. While they’re just now getting Mustangs, for years they’ve been getting hot versions of compact Fords that Americans can only dream of.
When Ford was looking for a new rally car for the 90s-era Group A, they needed a homologation. It has the usual hallmarks of any good special, tuner-friendly engine that came stock at 227 hp, which is like today’s Subaru boxer engine, and could be tuned to lofty heights, as well as suspension upgrades and chassis stiffening.
But what really sets the car apart is the crazy whale tail sticking out over the rear hatch. What’s even crazier is that wing was a compromise with the designer who didn’t want just the two wings, but wanted three. Wheeler Dealers would take a gray market import RS and fashion a third wing to see what that might look like.
13 1998 Porsche 911 GT1 Straßenversion
Porsche is used to winning sports car races. They’re so used to winning sports car races that when they don’t win sports car races, they kind of lose their minds. That’s exactly what happened in the mid-1990s.
The McLaren F1 GTR was dominating the GT1 category racing and Porsche felt that was their job. But that was going to be an uphill battle for the humble 911 Turbo. It was up against a car that was so incredible in its base trim it had to be detuned. So Porsche went the tried and true route, make a pure race car and a handful of ‘road’ versions and take back the podium.
The 911 GT1 was a 911 on steroids. It was a long-bodied car with a 544-hp twin-turbocharged flat-six pumping out a mildly detuned 544 hp that launches the car to 60 in less than four seconds. With only the slightest consideration given to lighter suspension so that the non-racetrack smooth roads didn’t tear the car to pieces, only the requisite 25 were made and Porsche was winning sports car races again. For a moment.
12 1985 BMW E30 M3
It’s hard to think of the M3 as anything other than the flagship sports car for BMW. It’s the darling of automotive journalists and the entry-level dream car for two generations of motorheads. But it started as a homologation special. The M in M3 stands for Motorsports, and the M division comprises engineers tasked with making the already fast BMWs faster. They had already made a thinly disguised race car with license plates named the M1 in the 70s, now they had to turn the E30 into something to compete with Mercedes-Benz in the Group A Touring Car series.
It featured distinct box flairs as well as improved suspension. The engine would continue to increase with the EVO1 and EVO2 models. Unlike other homologation specials, however, this one proved so popular that it became the flagship sports car for the brand and a legend was born.
11 Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR
Not to be outdone in GT1, Mercedes-Benz entered the fray with a car built within a millimeter of the rules. As a race car, that’s to be expected. But for a road car, the result was insane. It was powered by a V12 engine with 604 hp and a top speed of 214 mph complete with all the ground force bodywork of the race car. Being a Mercedes-Benz, the interior was still leather and even had air conditioning, but the amenities ended there. Mostly because at over $1.5 million it was already the most expensive production car ever made.
It was as if Group C prototypes were back. However, the unique tunnel underbody aerodynamic feature that had made Group C cars capable of such speed while sticking to the ground had been outlawed. This had an unforeseen effect. First, it was the Porsche 911 GT1 that lifted off the ground and slammed back down after losing air behind a slower car at Road Atlanta. Then at Le Mans, a Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR took flight on the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans and landed in a tree just off the track. It was the beginning of the end for FIA GT.
Mercedes-Benz didn’t complete the car in time for the FIA GT series to close its doors, but they were obligated to make the 26 they promised. Six of those were made into roadsters and a few others shared an engine with the Zonda.
10 1969 Mustang Boss 429
In 1969 Ford went for a homologation double dip. They already had the Boss 302 to homologate the Mustang into a road racer for the golden age of the Trans American road racing series, Trans Am for short. Ford also needed a production version of their 429 cubic inch engine to go racing in NASCAR.
Instead of making another special limited run, they took their Cobra Jet Mustangs and called up Kar Kraft, the people that helped them build the legendary GT40, to modify the engine bay to hold the much larger 429. NASCAR required the engine to be in at least 500 cars, 1,358 Boss 429s were made. To do this the battery was moved to the trunk so that anyone offering to jump-start the car is nice and confused.
Horsepower numbers for factory muscle cars are a bit of a shell game. Sometimes they were exaggerated, other times they were under-reported to avoid DMV classifications or factory directives that told the engineers to cool it so that the company didn’t look like it was contributing to the ‘hot rod menace.’ It was advertised at 375 hp, but the true number was probably well north of 500 hp, making it a hot road contender for the Camaro ZL1.
9 1990 Mercedes-Benz 190E Evolution II
Like the CLK-GTR, Mercedes-Benz was not one to take homologated escalation lying down. In response to EVO versions of the E30 M3, the mad scientists at AMG went to work on the 190E. The EVO I featured a higher-revving engine and lightened the car.
For the EVO II, things got a little crazier. The engine got a power boost from AMG and a suspension system that was adjustable from inside the car was added., but the most dramatic change was the body. Not content with just body flairs, the 190E Evo II also featured a Superbird-esque tall wing. Where the Daytona/Superbird’s wing was to keep the monster on the ground, the Evo’s wing was meant to give the car a lower drag coefficient.
Only 500 copies were required, and 502 were made. Rather than the traditional ‘silver arrow’ silver, all but two came in menacing black.
8 Toyota GT-One
When Toyota entered GT-1 racing they didn’t even bother with the pretense that they were making a road car. While the 911 GT1 and the CLK-GTR had a passing resemblance to a regular car that they manufactured, the GT-One looked like something straight out of Group C.
The GT-One was a result of the most careful obedience to the rules possible. Where Porsche and Mercedes had to build 25 examples, Toyota realized they could get away with just building two road-going examples. They even managed to convince the Le Mans governing body ACO that the gas tank could double as a trunk. That’s some high-quality rules-lawyering.
The only difference between the Le Mans race car and what could only technically be called a road car was an air-conditioner, hazard lights, and a slightly higher ride height. With a catalytic converter installed Toyota proved that they could sell it to a customer. But they didn’t and the car they built to prove it remains at Toyota.
7 1983 Ferrari 288 GTO
You don’t really associate Ferrari with rally racing. The legendary Stratos was powered by the Ferrari Dino 6-cylinder engine, but that wasn’t the end of Ferrari’s involvement in rally racing. In the 80s as Group B ramped up privateer Michellotto ran a handful of modified 308s, but against the powerhouses from Audi, Ford and Lancia Ferrari needed something lighter and faster.
So development began on the 288 GTO. Reviving the GTO moniker from the 250, it retained very little from the 308 it was supposed to be based on. It featured a twin-turbocharged 2.8-liter V8 out of the 308 putting out 400 hp through a widened track for larger tires and more robust suspension.
By the time that the 288 GTO was finished, however, so was Group B. Ferrari released the requisite homologation cars as a special edition and one of the craziest cars Ferrari had made until the follow-up F40 hit dealerships.
6 1998 Nissan R390 GT1
Toyota wasn’t the only Japanese manufacturer to play the homologation game in GT1. Nissan, however, decided to make the road car first and then make it into a race car. But it was still a road car made with the intention of becoming a race car.
The R390 featured a twin-turbo 3.5 liter V8 capable of 560 hp in road trim. Whereas other homologations were barely contained monsters for the road, the Nissan featured traction and launch control to help the theoretical owner get the power down. There were also nods for comfort like leather seats. However, only one was ever made from the same loophole as Toyota used, and that one sits next to the race car version at the Nissan headquarters.
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