Endurance racing is enjoying a boom period as manufacturers flock to build cars for the new Hypercar class regulations with the aim of winning the Le Mans 24 Hours.
But over the years there have been many successful machines that never raced in the world’s most prestigious sportscar event, either due to incompatible regulations, poor timing or in some cases a lack of will on behalf of the entrants or organisers.
We have attempted to rank cars based on their impact on motorsport and their on-track success, with outright winners given priority over class winners.
Arguments could be made for several cars that miss out, including the Audi R8 GT3. The first LMS ultra evolution of the R8 that claimed outright spoils in the Nurburgring and Spa 24 Hours in 2012 and 2014 would be our pick of the GT3 crop, although the ABS-equipped machines will get their chance to race at Le Mans next year when GTE Am is phased out.
Besides, Audi and Nissan – whose GT-R Nismo GT500 we also considered for winning the Super GT title in its first season in 2008 and tallied a further four with various engine/aerodynamic upgrades – have other cars we deemed worthy of making the list…
10. Lotus 23
“Even French newspapermen reckoned that the Automobile Club de l’Ouest had dealt unnecessarily harshly with Lotus.” That’s how Autosport magazine’s editorial began the 29 June 1962 issue, covering the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Two mid-engined Lotus 23s had been entered, for Jim Clark/Trevor Taylor (1000cc) and Les Leston/Tony Shelly (750cc), but were turned down at scrutineering because “the front wheels had four-stud fixing, and the rears six-stud,” explained Autosport founding editor Gregor Grant. “It was alleged that the spare wheel could replace only one pair of wheels.”
Insufficient ground clearance, excessive turning circle and non-compliant fuel tank capacity were also highlighted by the scrutineers.
Lotus boss Colin Chapman made changes, including having the rear wheels modified to the four-stud set-up, only for the officials to refuse again on the basis that, if the rears had been designed for six, they were now unsafe. Despite Chapman’s protestations the organisers did not budge.
It was hard not to see a conspiracy given that the Lotus entries were arguably the strongest non-French contenders for the coveted Index of Performance prize, which Lotus had taken in 1957. French cars duly finished first and second in the IoP…
“The cars were entered in the Voiturette class and were therefore being presented as lightly modified small-capacity road cars,” says Nick Adams, Lotus 23 registrar of the Historic Lotus Register. “This was a point of controversy even before the event, so the scrutineers took every opportunity to make things difficult when Lotus gave them the chance.
“Ferrari had similar issues with their entries for the larger capacity classes not meeting the ‘spirit’ of the regulations, but used their greater political clout to get the scrutineers overruled by the organisers. That may have fuelled the scrutineers’ determination to object to the 23.”
A Lotus Elite did win the Index of Thermal Efficiency and the organisers admitted their error with the 23s, but Chapman vowed not to return to the 24 Hours and never did.
The lightweight Lotus 23 went on to compete with a variety of engines, ranging from 750cc Coventry Climax power to 1500cc Lotus-Ford Twin Cam and 1600cc Cosworth, and even a Ferrari V6. It had already made a big impact when Clark led the early stages of May’s Nurburgring 1000Km in his 1500cc 100bhp version against more-powerful opposition before being overcome by exhaust fumes.
The nimble 23 series, which included B and wider-wheeled C versions, proved successful giant-killers, with 131 being built originally and others being constructed in later years for historic competition.
9. Audi IMSA Quattro
The inclusion of a car that didn’t win the IMSA GTO title in its single season of competition in 1989 is perhaps controversial. The Audi 90 Quattro was defeated by the Roush Racing Mercury Cougar XR-7 largely because it didn’t contest either the Daytona 24 Hours or Sebring 12 Hours.
But unquestionably Audi changed the game, thanks to its four-wheel-drive technology that helped Hans-Joachim Stuck to claim seven victories on his way to third in the points. Resembling a rally car on track in the flamboyant Stuck’s hands, it pointed to Audi’s future as a sportscar racing heavyweight after its circuit racing successes the previous year in Trans-Am.
Under the direction of Audi USA special vehicles manager Josef Hoppen, the cars were competitive on debut in Miami, where a transmission failure sidelined Stuck and Hurley Haywood was a blameless victim of a backmarker accident. Such was its impression that the car adorned the front cover of Autosport that week.
Victory arrived on only its second race outing at Summit Point, Stuck leading Haywood in a textbook 1-2 that set the tone for the rest of the year. Even when a Cougar or the plucky Mazda of Steve Millen (plus Jean Alesi’s guesting Ferrari at Laguna Seca) started ahead, the Audi was usually in front by the finish, with Haywood regularly providing the gloss. There was no question that the flame-spitting Audi was the machine to beat.
A switch to the DTM beckoned for 1990, making Audi’s IMSA tenure a brief one. But in that time the 90 Quattro achieved what all great sportscars should aspire for – reverence.
Friday favourite: The "4WD limo" that stunned a DTM star
8. BMW M3 GTR V8
Back-to-back Nurburgring 24 Hours victories in 2004-05 cement the M3 GTR’s place in this list, although its accomplishments in the 2001 American Le Mans Series alone make it worthy of mention.
The absence of a production V8-powered M3 GTR for much of that season courted controversy as BMW vanquished GT class rival Porsche. It won seven of the 10 rounds, going unbeaten following a trio of wins for Lucas Luhr and Sascha Maassen’s Alex Job 911 at the start of the season, and works Schnitzer driver Jorg Muller won the title after being split from season-long partner JJ Lehto at the final round.
Dirk Muller scored the car’s first win at Jarama with Fredrik Ekblom, leading home a Schnitzer 1-2, but was never going to be in the title picture as they only received their mount for round three at Donington. Muller views the clean sheet four-litre V8 engine that produced close to 500bhp as “one of the really coolest engines” he’s encountered.
“The whole concept of it with the two side-pipes on the right-hand side and the big flames coming out, everybody knew when that car was coming around!” says the German.
The car was also competitive in customer hands once Tom Milner’s PTG squad got its hands on it for Sears Point. Equipped with Yokohama tyres, instead of the Michelins fitted to the factory Schnitzer cars, Boris Said teamed up with Hans Stuck to win at Portland and Petit Le Mans together with Bill Auberlen.
When eligibility requirements changed for 2002, plans to race the M3 GTR at Le Mans were canned and premature retirement appeared likely. BMW Motorsport boss Gerhard Berger stated that the requirement to run with up to 50kg ballast and a 20% smaller air restrictor meant “it does not have a fair chance anymore”.
But Berger’s job share Mario Theissen wasn’t prepared to let it die. The M3 GTR made an underwhelming return at the Nordschleife in 2003 as Opel scored an improbable victory, but Schnitzer redeemed itself by winning the following two years, proving Muller’s point that the car “was built for those [long-distance] races”.
PLUS: How a DTM failure became an unlikely Nurburgring conqueror
Together with Jorg Muller, Stuck and Pedro Lamy, he was part of the winning crew in the “very demanding” 2004 race in which he “never raced either way on rains or on slicks, we raced the whole race on cut slicks”. Truly special machines have special moments, and this was certainly one.
7. Lancia D24
Legendary designer Vittorio Jano’s Formula 1 D50 is more famous, but he produced some impressive sportscars, too.
The D24 appeared at the end of 1953 and finished a dominant first and second in the gruelling Carrera Panamericana, with Juan Manuel Fangio/Gino Bronzoni and Piero Taruffi/Luigi Maggio. Sadly, the third car crashed out, fatally injuring Italian ace Felice Bonetto.
Lancia didn’t contest the Buenos Aires 1000km that kicked off the 1954 world sportscar championship but should have won the subsequent Sebring 12 Hours. Ferrari, which had won in Argentina, missed the race and the four D24s were comfortably the fastest cars in the event. But an array of mechanical problems struck and just one of the D24s made it to the end – in second, beaten by the diminutive 1500cc OSCA of Stirling Moss and Bill Lloyd.
Alberto Ascari then gave the D24 another big road-racing success by winning the Mille Miglia, more than half an hour clear of the best Ferrari. Later that month Taruffi also won the non-championship Targa Florio, while the D24 topped several other, lower-profile European events.
Lancia decided to withdraw from Le Mans, despite the ruggedness of the D24 having already been proven, but the 3.3-litre V6-engined design did contest the RAC Tourist Trophy at Dundrod.
They finished 2-3, with Fangio/Taruffi and Robert Manzon/Eugenio Castellotti, but Lancia lost to the Ferrari 750 Monza of Mike Hawthorn and Maurice Trintignant. That meant Ferrari won the title, though Lancia did beat Jaguar into second.
Focus soon shifted to the promising D50 and Lancia was in ever-increasing financial difficulties so the D24s were not seen at a major event again. But in their short careers they had won enough to be worthy of this list.
6. Alfa Romeo T33/TT/12
The Alfa Romeo T33 series included many versions, some of which did race at Le Mans. The two-litre T33/2 finished 1-2-3 in class in 1968 and one of the very different 33TT/3s finished fourth overall in 1972. But the ultimate examples didn’t contest the 24 Hours.
Alfa had played second (or third) fiddle to Ferrari and Matra in the first half of the 1970s but had things to itself when those giants withdrew, just in time for the T33/TT/12 – with a 12-cylinder engine instead of its predecessors’ V8s – to hit form.
The Autodelta-run tubular spaceframe car had first appeared in a shambolic 1973 and won at Monza the following year, but Matra dominated the season. Alfa withdrew from Le Mans, leaving Matra to complete its hat-trick.
Matra was gone by 1975 and the Alfa was the car to have in the World Championship for Makes.
Now run by Willi Kauhsen’s team, the T33/TT/12 won seven of the nine rounds and comfortably took the title.
But amid the ongoing fuel crisis, Le Mans featured strict rules on fuel consumption for 1975 and lost its championship status. The Alfas stayed away and the Gulf Mirage of Jacky Ickx and Derek Bell won at the slowest winning speed for years.
Alfa skipped most of 1976 but Autodelta returned the following year with the 520bhp 33SC12 version. In the absence of serious opposition in the World Championship for Sports Cars for Group 6 machines, the Alfas won all eight rounds.
Once again, Le Mans wasn’t part of the championship and again the Alfas weren’t present. That meant it wasn’t part of the epic contest between Porsche and Alpine-Renault. And that sums up the problem of how to place the Alfa on this list – although successful, it rarely proved itself against the best competition of the time.
5. Toyota Eagle MkIII
Only a lack of stronger opposition prevents the last great IMSA GTP car of its era being higher up. A two-time title winner and twice a conqueror of the Sebring 12 Hours, the Toyota-badged MkIII run by Dan Gurney’s All-American Racers outfit triggered Nissan and Jaguar’s withdrawal after dominating in 1992.
In the hands of Juan Manuel Fangio II and PJ Jones, it won the last seven races and all 10 rounds it contested in 1993. Had it not been for the team skipping Road America, where Joest’s Porsche 962 claimed one last hurrah, its win streak would likely have stretched to 18 instead of 14 – which still comfortably beat Nissan’s record of eight…
The Eagle was quick from the off, scooping two of the last four races of 1991. It should have won on debut at Laguna Seca, where Fangio led until a pit infringement after a needless insurance stop demoted him to seventh. But he made amends next time out at Portland with a late pass on Geoff Brabham’s Nissan, then won again at Del Mar.
Both Eagles suffered mechanical gremlins at Daytona in 1992, but a first true endurance win at Sebring for Fangio and Andy Wallace after outlasting the two Nissans really started the ball rolling.
Davy Jones and the Jaguar XJR-14 won in dominant fashion at Road America and a wet Mid-Ohio but couldn’t sustain his challenge.
A veteran of sportscar programmes in customer Porsche 962s, the factory Sauber-Mercedes, Nissan and Jaguar teams, Kenneth Acheson had joined Fangio and Wallace for Daytona in 1992 and was invited back the following year – only for engine failure to put his car out. Despite a catalogue of brake and gear problems, Jones, Mark Dismore and Rocky Moran claimed the spoils in the sister car.
“It was absolutely best in class both years I was there,” says Acheson. “A super-quick car, well-built. It was just like any good car, it’s good everywhere.”
Friday favourite: Kenneth Acheson’s favourite car
Fangio and Wallace repeated their Sebring victory following a misfire for Jones, the two Eagles thereafter contesting races between them – to the point that Fangio still finished second despite a broken driveshaft at Laguna Seca, and at Phoenix after losing two laps to repairs following a puncture.
4. Mercedes CLK GTR
The CLK GTR that scooped four 1-2 finishes on its way to the 1997 FIA GT teams’ and drivers’ titles with Bernd Schneider more than merits its place on this list. Although it took four attempts to win, it was only beaten twice thereafter in the hands of the factory and would certainly have won at the second time of asking at Silverstone without an inconveniently timed red flag.
Perhaps that should not have come as a surprise, given the CLK GTR was permitted to race without the prior approval of a road-going model as was the case with the rival BMW-powered McLaren F1 GTR, Porsche 911 GT1 and low-budget Lotus Elise GT1. The resultant bespoke racing car immediately showed its potential as Schneider qualified over seven tenths clear of the field for its Hockenheim debut until an early braking problem sidelined him and the starter motor failed on the sister Alessandro Nannini/Marcel Tiemann CLK.
A prang for Alex Wurz in Finland meant Schneider had to wait until the Nurburgring to avenge their Silverstone defeat. But after opening Mercedes’ account with a 1-2 on home turf, Schneider relentlessly picked up the points to overhaul Schnitzer’s early leaders Steve Soper and Lehto. The Finn’s stellar wet drive at Spa and Schneider’s freak clash with a backmarker at Mugello helped to keep Schnitzer in the fight, but their race-ending fire at Sebring – scene of a virtuoso wet drive from Schneider – and an off-colour Laguna Seca, where Klaus Ludwig and Schneider breezed to victory, meant the Merc driver couldn’t be caught.
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Schneider twice reaped rewards from jumping into a team-mate’s winning car but there was no doubting that he and the CLK GTR were the year’s benchmark combination.
Not racing at Le Mans in 1997 was vital, believes Nannini’s race engineer Owen Hayes, to the car achieving its full potential in FIA GT: “It was absolutely the right decision, it would have been way too much."
Despite Porsche bringing a new car from the start of 1998, the CLK GTR continued to hold the fort in the opening rounds until the CLK LM’s arrival. Superior reliability at Oschersleben allowed Ludwig and Ricardo Zonta to head a 1-2 from Tiemann and Jean-Marc Gounon’s customer Persson entry, before engine failure at Silverstone put Porsche’s Allan McNish out of a clear lead. Schneider and new co-driver Mark Webber capitalised to secure the car’s final win.
3. Nissan GTP ZX-Turbo
Mark Blundell’s famous pole lap in 1990 with the Lola-built RC90K was perhaps Nissan’s finest hour at Le Mans. The less said about its most recent attempt in 2015 the better, but its prototype history is not without success. Between 1988 and 1991 Geoff Brabham won four consecutive IMSA GTP titles aboard Nissans built by Don Devendorf’s Electramotive organisation – later renamed Nissan Performance Technology Incorporated (NPTI).
The ZX-Turbo makes our list ahead of its replacement, the NPT-90, as the first car to end the Porsche 962’s GTP stranglehold, which contributed to three consecutive titles. That’s one more than its successor, which by the end of 1991 had itself been replaced by the updated NPT-91 and usurped by the Eagle MkIII as IMSA’s dominant force.
Its Lola-based design had won once in 1987, but Trevor Harris’s all-new ZX-Turbo moved the game on. His V6 turbo-powered design incorporated new front suspension and was estimated by Brabham to be 2.5 times stiffer than its predecessor. It boasted prodigious acceleration too, an invaluable asset in traffic.
Brabham won eight times in a row during a phenomenally successful 1988 campaign that yielded the title despite Nissan skipping Daytona and Sebring. On debut in Miami, he qualified two seconds clear of the field only for boiled brakes to hamper his and John Morton’s race. But he won from the back of the grid next time out at Road Atlanta despite a pre-race chassis change and a fuel fire.
Not all races were as dominant as Mid-Ohio, where Brabham and Tom Gloy led all 129 laps from pole, or Portland where Brabham headed Morton in its first 1-2. Nissan already looked unlikely to win at San Antonio before a broken CV joint put Brabham out, and he shunted heavily at Del Mar battling Klaus Ludwig as Nissan lost the manufacturers’ crown by a single point.
But in 1989 it asserted its dominance despite renewed opposition from Jaguar’s turbocharged XJR-10 and new restrictor rules. Chip Robinson and Arie Luyendyk joined Brabham for a notable win at Sebring, despite losing a wheel, and Robinson added five further wins alongside Brabham as well as a solo triumph at San Antonio to take the title down to the wire. He ultimately lost out to Brabham, three times a solo winner, after a Del Mar driveshaft failure.
The ZX-Turbo was phased out after Watkins Glen in 1990, but it had by then already contributed to a Sebring 1-2 headed by Derek Daly and Bob Earl, while Brabham/Robinson/Earl led the customer Busby Racing of John Paul Jr and Kevin Cogan in Miami. A final win at West Palm Beach for Daly and Brabham was the latter’s 22nd with the car since 1988.
Its only major missing accolade was a Daytona victory, engine failures and a fuel fire curtailing Nissan hopes in 1990.
2. Jaguar XJR-14
It’s a pity that the car which brushed Peugeot aside to win the 1991 world sportscar championship was never considered a serious prospect to race at Le Mans. Ross Brawn hadn’t designed it with the 24 Hours in mind, but the XJR-14 merited more than the one qualifying attempt permitted to Wallace – who was not a regular in the car that year.
“If we’d got pole, I think [Tom Walkinshaw] was going to let it start and then it would have just been retired after the first stint or something,” says TWR engineer Steve Farrell, who ran Teo Fabi to the 1991 title. “But Tom was so pissed off that he just decided it wasn’t even going to start.”
The Jaguar was clearly the car to beat as the new 3.5-litre formula began, Derek Warwick claiming pole at Suzuka by 2.5s. But both Jaguars failed as loss of fuel pressure stranded Martin Brundle before a faulty starter motor delayed Warwick in the pits. Peugeot therefore inherited victory, but Jaguar took the next three on the spin at Monza, Silverstone and the Nurburgring.
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Farrell maintains that the standard of aerodynamic performance on the XJR-14 would “probably be considered quite good” even today, as Brawn “had decided right from the beginning that downforce was going to be king”. By contrast Peugeot’s initial effort, to Farrell, “looked almost like a Le Mans car of old”, which “didn’t seem to have enough downforce”.
“We just killed it,” he says. “It was a wonderful car, that 14 had such aero efficiency, it was unbelievable.”
Fabi gained an edge in the title battle at Silverstone, where Warwick was not allowed to claim the points for sharing victory. He joined the Italian’s car after his own machine, in Brundle’s hands, lost six laps to a broken throttle cable. The 12 points for third he’d have pocketed without the switch would have given him the crown.
PLUS: Warwick’s three shots at a Group C title
A lack of development on the XJR-14 and a significant effort from Peugeot allowed the French cars to overhaul Jaguar in time for its home round at Magny-Cours, and Warwick was left to rue a starter motor failure that cost him a likely second in Mexico on a day Fabi was unable to start after terminal pre-race engine problems. But a Jaguar title that was never truly in doubt was sealed by Fabi at Autopolis.
“If we didn’t win the world championship that year, we should have been sacked,” says Farrell.
After Jaguar’s WSC withdrawal, the XJR-14 was raced in modified form at Le Mans by Mazda as the MXR-01 in 1992 and proved a winner with Davy Jones in IMSA that year. But a lack of suspension modifications meant it was prone to struggles over bumps, as seen at Lime Rock where Jones retired from the lead with suspension failure. It later formed the basis for the Porsche WSC-95 that Joest developed into the Le Mans winner of 1996-97.
Archive: The mothballed racer that became a double Le Mans winner
1. Maserati MC12
Weight of success, longevity and its role in forcing the FIA to take a focused approach to Balance of Performance put the reborn GT1 era’s most dominant car at the top of our list. FIA GT boss Stephane Ratel was reluctant to accept the Dallara-built racer given the GT1 class’s implosion after Mercedes monopolised the 1998 championship, and it wasn’t permitted to score points in its initial guise in 2004.
After Andrea Bertolini and Mika Salo had taken two wins from its four end-of-season outings with the AF Corse-run de facto works operation, the hastily revised 2005 MC12 was 180mm shorter with drastically reduced aerodynamics – to the point that development driver Bertolini regards it as a completely different car. But it was still too long and wide to be accepted by Le Mans organising committee the ACO.
The revised MC12 was the car to beat in FIA GT in 2005, yet missed out on the title. The MC12 swept the podium at Magny-Cours and Silverstone, then won the Spa 24 Hours courtesy of owner-driver Michael Bartels’ Vitaphone Racing operation.
But amid increasingly draconian weight penalties to neutralise the advantage of its stiffer carbon chassis, Bartels and Timo Scheider were gradually reeled in by the Larbre Ferrari 550 Gabriel Gardel shared with Pedro Lamy. They ultimately lost the championship amid a scrutineer U-turn at the Bahrain finale, where Larbre had initially been disqualified for lacking sufficient fuel to provide a sample.
Following that kick in the teeth, Bartels and Bertolini steamed to the 2006 title, the first of five on the trot for the Vitaphone-MC12 axis. They also claimed the car’s second Spa success together with Eric van de Poele, who had joined Bartels and Scheider in 2006.
Thomas Biagi did the honours in 2007 after a kidney operation ruled Bartels out of two rounds. His solo title was achieved as Vitaphone switched to run Michelin tyres, a call from Bartels that Biagi believes was crucial in his success and typified the German’s scrupulous desire for improvement.
“I remember several times seeing Michael cleaning the coffee machine because it was not perfect,” Biagi chuckles.
After spending 2007 at Pirelli-shod Playteam, Bertolini was back at Vitaphone for 2008 and combined with Bartels, van de Poele and Stephane Sarrazin for the MC12’s third Spa 24 victory. The title he won with Bartels that year was successfully defended in final multi-class FIA GT season in 2009 amid stiff competition from the PK Corvette team.
A last hurrah came in the maiden GT1 world championship of 2010 as Bertolini and Bartels propelled the grandfathered MC12 to the crown. A reduction in financial support from Maserati caused the programme to conclude at season’s end after a glorious run that enriched GT racing – despite its absence from Le Mans.
All who drove the MC12 recall it fondly. To Bertolini “it was like a dress, it was my baby”. Even its sound elicits warm feelings from Biagi: “When the team, the engineers were warming up the engine in the garage, it was music.”
PLUS: The unwanted GT car that changed sportscar racing forever
