The independent German Holzer Group used the occasion of the world championship Rally of Portugal to announce their “R5 concept” Corsa car.
The new Holzer R5 Corsa will not be homologated by Opel.It is a design that the parent Opel company will not undertake official homologation.
Carefully naming the car the “Holzer R5 Corsa”, seeking to avoid confusion with an official Opel project, Holzer Group CEO Gunter Holzer confirmed this is ”a 100 percent private project”.
The company confirmed they recognised that ”the process of FIA homologation can only be done by a manufacturer itself”, although the car displayed at the launch in the service park at Rally of Portugal was liveried to look exactly like an official Opel car.
Opel has not authorised homologation and production of an R5 car.
Holzer runs the official Opel Junior Team R2 cars in the FIA European Rally Championship.
This model follows the current trend for building budget competition cars which do not comply with the rigid FIA requirement of parent factory approval with its rigorous technical controls, but designs for which can sometimes be accepted by the FIA for regional championship use.
The Swedish MPart company established the trend for limited approval with their Mitsubishi Mirage “R5”, while many countries admit cars of special designs for their national championship rallies, but are not recognised for foreign international competition use.
- Martin Holmes
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