Cars That Made The 90s with BTCC icon Jason Plato

The 90s. Cars. If you like both of these things, then you love the cars that made the 90s. Everyday reliability that put the 80s to shame, eye-catching, iconic shapes, and a respect on the road that’s impossible to find in the 21st century. The 90s was an unbeaten era for motoring.

It starts wherever it can – the bug – either on the TV or on your gaming console. From BTCC and WRC, Gran Turismo, or even the more modern Fast and Furious films and Max Power culture. The everyday car was something you’d see on both the roads, and the television, not just on adverts! 

The cars that raced in these virtual mediums were still there when you switched off the screens and took a step outside. Take the Lancia Delta Integrale, for example. Though its original facelift was in 1986, the beast participated in Group A rallies at every opportunity in the 90s, with multiple visual and performance revisions taking place during this time.

“Back then, the cars looked like the production model,” says Jez, from Macwhirter Motorsport in Wales, “You could go in the showroom then, and buy the car that you saw rallying on the telly.”

“People could still achieve that look with their own road-going cars,” Jon from Oxfordshire continues, “I think that was a lot of the draw to it.”

And sure, you could look at these cars on the road, but the better part? You could drive them — and what an experience that is. As former BTCC champion Jason Plato tells us: “The 90s car, when you sat in it, I sat in it like I would sit in a race car.

“I’m under the steering wheel – I’m in the car. ‘94, ‘95, I had the Renault 19. ‘96, I went to the Megane 16-valve, and I was, all of a sudden, sat on it, not in it. And you know what, it upset me, because I didn’t want to sit like that. That’s what I remember from being sat in cool cars of the 90s.

“Also, there wasn’t the amount of cars on the road. Five miles out of Newcastle, you were properly out in the countryside. The roads were amazing! And, consequently… you know… you could enjoy your car.”

Steve and his Lotus Elise, follows this with a grin, “I just love driving fast… in a, sort of, controlled way. Cars of the 80s, 90s, early 2000s… they’re the cars. They’re the cars.”

It was more than commuting, more than just getting behind the wheel and steering it to where you wanted to go, yet at the same time, it was just that. There were no distractions, no touchscreens in places where the air conditioning knobs were (if you had such a luxury), and there were no speed cameras, or ‘the scourge of the driver’, as Damian from TheCarGuysTV puts it.

“People would steal and race and drive fast,” Damian says, “And then they’d get chased by the coppers, and then they’d get taken down, and that was it! It was a nice, simple, transactional process – that’s what happened. If you were an idiot, you got chased by the police in some lovely, powerful, beautiful car like a Granada Scorpio or something, and then they would stop you and that would be it. Everyone else just drove pretty well, actually. More or less, they could focus just on the business of driving.”

“I just love the exhilaration of driving,” Steve adds, sitting in his Lotus Elise, “Just taking the corners differently, seeing which ways to go fast round the corner… This car is just perfect for that.”

“It’s the joy of driving,” Plato continues, “Learning how to downchange correctly, learning how to change gears smoothly – it’s part of the experience of driving a car!”

And that’s just what made the 90s unique. The cars back then were made to be driven and enjoyed. It was the connection between the driver and the motor, the steering wheel and the wheels beneath it. The handling told you what it did and didn’t need, the roads its blank canvas.

Do you think we’ll ever experience that again?