Production vehicle

Now, the term has broadened to include hand-assembled vehicles and those made on production or assembly line.

Even under Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the exact definition of what was (or was not) a production car was unclear and controversial, which led to rules written in 1955.

[11] Although the term is defined for particular types of vehicles, and that a certain number of a model must be produced to qualify as "production", it is another matter to enforce the rules.

[11] For example, the 1968 FIA rules state that "production" for sports cars need to have at least 25 identical cars produced within 12-months and they were meant for regular sales to individual purchasers, Group B race series, a minimum of 200 cars were required for homologation, Group A, a minimum of 2,500 identical models have to be built in 12 consecutive months[12][13] However, FIA rules tend to allow a degree of modification from the original.

In 2006 a Pontiac TransAm of John Rains Racing was classified as being the fastest production model (Bonneville D/PS class) with a top speed in excess of 297 mph (478 km/h).

Today most American stock cars may superficially resemble standard American family sedans, but are in fact purpose-built racing machines built to a strict set of regulations governing the car design ensuring that the chassis, suspension, engine, etc.

In Australia there was a formula that was similar to NASCAR called AUSCAR, but it has been ended, and a form of touring cars has taken its place (this is known locally as sSpercars, featuring the Bathurst 1000 and Adelaide 500).

Series-production cars fall under rule D2.3.2 and state that they must be: Category B: Series-production Automobiles in production at the time of the application for the Record Attempt and either homologated by the FIA, or for which an application for homologation has been made to the FIA or recognised by the ASN of the country in which they are manufactured for National Records.

[17] The high level of modification allowed under these FIA's rules would tend to indicate that the cars are production based, rather than straight from an assembly line.

[18] Production cars under the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) rules refers purely to the body class.

For example, in the United States Briggs Cunningham's business was classified as a hobby by tax officials because he did not manufacture enough of each model for the Cunningham automobile to be considered a production vehicle, but rather the IRS classified them as high-performance prototype automobiles built as racecars.

[26][27][28][29] Three lists within Wikipedia and the discussions on their talk pages illustrate the difficulty in defining what a production car is.

It was changed to the following after a vote based on suggestions by a Koenigsegg employee : The talk pages for all these lists continue to have ongoing discussions about the definitions.