Ok here goes
There have been a lot of great posts on this board about ST’s, some by current owners providing a lot of detail about their cars.
Also Raj recently provided a great picture on another thread (reproduced here) showing a list of 1972 ST’s including engine numbers in most cases.
Along with the ST’s were some cars apparently known as SR’s with Group 3 or group 4 modifications? It is not at all clear to me how to differentiate them from ST’s given neither were official designations and there were no specific Vin numbers for either – unlike the RS or R - can anyone help on this aspect?
I have heard somewhere that the ST’s were from 1969 to 1971 and the E series 1972 cars were mainly “SR’s”. Maybe someone on the board with more detailed knowledge in this area can help clarify whether there is any truth in this.
To further complicate this area cars were constructed in at least 3 different ways and to lots of different specifications so that there is probably no such thing as a “typical ST”.
The different production methods included:
1) pulled off the production line and built up as a factory built car in either rallye or track form
2) built up by a customer team using a standard car and factory supplied options kit
3) completely built from scratch by a customer team in which case the vin number may not look anything like a “normal ST”
There are also a lot of different claims on how many such cars were produced. I suspect the answer will only be available for factory constructed cars (if then) as the details of all the customer modified cars and cars built up by race teams to comply with group 3 or group 4 homologation papers are likely to never be known.
I have also seen various references to the claim that the werks only ever used these cars in rallye form and left the track versions (both factory produced and otherwise) to customer teams and privateers.
So to a certain extent I suspect that it is a futile exercise to try and catalogue such cars – although that is a great reason for trying to do it here as it is unlikely that a book like the RS book or Starkey's books will be produced due to these ambiguities.
It is also hard to say if one construction method is “more relevant” or “more important” or “more correct” than another – it probably depends more on the actual car and its history than how it originated although there must always be a “premium” – not necessarily in price terms – placed on a factory produced car with appropriate papers. Indeed the 1972 Kremer and Brumos cars are amongst the more “important” or maybe “famous” ST’s and I understand that they are built up by the respective teams from factory kits and base cars rather than Werks constructed race cars..
However to start the ball rolling I will post details of the cars I have in my database. I have collected these over a substantial period of time. I make no claims about the accuracy of the data except to say that as far as possible it has been checked, and the cars with photos of factory letters or similar identification are probably correct. I would welcome any further information to ad to the collective knowledge in this area. A lot of the information has been sourced from books (such as by John Starkey), websites etc and I would like to acknowledge the contribution made by all of those and posters on this and other boards at the start.