The Monaro situation makes a farse of the technical regulations Procar Nations Cup published, which claims to comply with Group 3E Series Production Cars, with limited aditional freedoms.

The Ferrari 360 Michelotto looks like a Ferrari 360. Modifications allowed to it are compression and cams which increase power from the road version's 400BHP to 425 BHP. Since the start of the year it has been burdened with 100kg of ballast, has had the revs cut back from 9000 to 8300 and has the inlet restrictor size reduced from 30.8mm to 29.8mm on each bank of that superb 3.6 V8 engine. Power is now below that of the road going version! Yet an Aussie family hack 2 door sedan is allowed to fit a 620 7litre le-mans endurance spec Chevrolet race engine!

The Lamborghini GTR is still a Lambo GTR, and also has inlet restrictors. Sure these cars have some mods, but really only to minor engine tuning, suspension geometry, springs and dampers.

meanwhile there is not a single thing on the Procar Monaro that relates to the production Monaro:
*Corvette Le Mans racer engine
*Holinger six-speed racing gearbox, with sequential shift!
*Ford nine-inch differential
*V8 Supercar front suspension and brakes
and specially fabricated independant rear suspension
*V8 supercar aero package
*even the basic bodyshell is heavily modified with tubbed rear wheel wells, completely fabricated fron inner wheelarches to clear the 2" wider than V8 Supercar wheels and tyres!

Try speccing any of those on your friendly Holden Dealer's options list! It has more power than a V8 supercar, bigger wheels, better suspension a more aerodymanic bodyshell!

The other cars that compete in Nations Cup are much more production based. Sure they are supercars, but that's what they are. Taking a Monaro bodyshell and building it into an unlimited Sport Sedan to allow it to kick butt all over the the greatest sporting marques in the world is a bloody joke.

But credit where it is due, Holden were very smart to debut the car at Bathurst to avoid any possibility of it being subject to any such parity measures as imposed on almost every other car in the feild.

If you want to see where the Monaro should have finished, look at the SS Commodore which plays by the rules that apply to every other Procar team, and finished 69 laps down in 10th place. 9 laps behind the Tickford Falcon, behind a couple of STi WRX's, and 43 laps behind an BMW M3. Not so impressive huh?

sorry for such a long post, but that Monaro really ####s me. but I guess you probably figured that for yourselves by now