The Historic Racing Saloons Register was formed in 1985 by Glen Maskell (the first Chairman until his death in 2004), Bob Sherring, Tony Castle-Miller and Phil Wight, who became the first committee.
The interest in all forms of historic motor sport was beginning to blossom in the 80’s and there was already a club promoting classic saloon car racing but the technical modifications they allowed were very restrictive. The founding HRSR group wanted the greater freedom to allow the use of sensible ‘period’ modifications to the cars – brakes, suspensions and engines, in particular – whilst retaining the originality of bodywork shape and materials (although lightweight fibre glass or aluminium was allowed for doors, bonnets and boot lids, provided the original outwards shape was retained), as well as allowing advertising on the cars to help the drivers keep their costs down.
So in 1985 a few of the drivers lead by Glen Maskell approached the British Racing Sports Car Club, based at Brands Hatch and formed the HRSR, and a big thank you must go to John Nicol and Bob Armstrong who were in charge of BRSCC and helped set up this new Championship. The first few races were with the Aston Martin Owners Club and BRSCC before settling with BRSCC for the next few seasons. In 1995 to raise their profile the HRSR committee approached the HSCC to become part of their race series and the partnership has been a great success
The cars were grouped in classes by engine size with minimum weights for each class and weights were regularly reviewed by the committee to ensure that those in the lower capacity classes such as Imps and Minis could mix it with the larger capacity cars such as Ford Anglia’s, Lotus Cortina’s and Jaguars – particularly in the wet.
Around 1998 the club reorganised the class structure to allow Appendix K modified cars to run in the series in their own class structure. These cars are generally lower powered than their HRSR class equivalent and also have to retain their original suspension and braking systems but have the ability to race at their ‘homologated’ weight, which is usually lighter than their HRSR class equivalent model.
As one of the best established clubs for historic saloons, we are now allied to the Historic Sports Car Club and compete for the Historic Saloons Pre ’66 Championship. The high profile of the HSCC gives us a good programme of races at all of the best circuits in the UK.