I would disagree with this definition. I'm not a total car historian or
anything so I'm not so certain of my own information. I understood that the
R/T and G/T names went back to the late 30's car racing in Europe. There were
two "styles" of races conducted: pure winding track races and "road" races
that went all over the place over all kinds of roads (paved, cobblestone,
dirt). The cars had to be totally different to race in these different races.
The races were classified as "Rally Turismo" and "Gran Turismo" (Rally
Touring & Grand Touring) thus the cars became classified as R/T and G/T. The
R/T cars were tough, and accellerated like mad (good street cars). The G/T
cars were smooth handling, low, and had more mid to high end power as their
track velocities were much higher (sports cars). This is why you tend to see
sports cars called "G/T" and muscle type cars called "R/T". To this day both
of these types of races still exist and are extremely popular internationally.
Here in the US only the G/T circut enjoy's continued following. R/T races
seem to have been replaced by pure 4x4 or offroad events. I think the SCCA
still holds some R/T style races here in the states.
Now, this other definition may be correct from a US manufacturers view, but
Europe has long been designating R/T and G/T on their cars, and I figured the
US manufacturers just followed suit.
Shaun H.
----original message-----
This goes back to the late 60s when GM and Ford had names (and image)
for their muscle cars. Mopars had quick cars like the 383 B bodies, 426
street wedges, and of course the Street Hemi but they didn't have a
catchy name and therefore had little image with the street crowd.
In 67 Plymouth came out with the GTX and Dodge came out with the R/T
which stands for Road / Track.
KW
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:09:51 EDT