Obin, Roland
I have just searched for some pictures to prove me right, but failed. Therefore I will concede on the gull-wing door thing :-)
I think last year's Opel cars used a normal door arrangement - therefore I was surprised as to why this 'DTM' based car did not.
However, it looks like the 2001 cars have the gull-wing arrangement - if it is good enough for them, then it is good enough for this car.
It actually sounds like this is better than the race-car as it is no longer constrained by air restrictors or tyre sizes - interesting!
However, could they ever shift enough of them at that price?? Maclaran F1's were not flying out of the factory in the end, Bugatti was sold off, Jaguar lost a heap on the XJ220 (there are still unsold cars available).
The closest cars in concept would be the Nissan R390 GT, the Toyota GT-One and the road version of the Mercedes LeMans car. All of these were very expensive, very low and based on contempory LeMans cars - I doubt the combined production volume exceeded 30 cars!
The Astra could not be used in any race series, and it still sort of looks like a hatchback with some go-faster kit. I doubt this will make it into production.
MG Rover, Ford et all struggled to the 6R4 and RS200 group B rally cars - and these were serious tools, that were on 'only' 944 to 911 type money!
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Marcus
'73 S Targa
[This message has been edited by MBlake (edited 08-15-2001).]