<DIV><DIV> <p class="CATLEADERS" style="margin: 0in -31.5pt 0pt 0in; tab-stops: 4.5pt right dotted 463.5pt 6.5in">Professional automobile racing has always been dominated by sanctioning bodies whose main goal was to ensure competition. That has meant seeing that cars are well matched--in body shape or chassis/engine combinations or engine size. But what about an all-out competition, in which one team's idea of the fastest race car could be pitted against another&rsquo;s, regardless of mechanical &ldquo;parity&rdquo;? This was what the International Motor Sports Association&rsquo;s (IMSA) Grand Touring Prototypes (GTP) race series was about. The Series ran from 1981 to 1993, and it was one of the most exhilarating racing experiences of all time.<br> <br> This book is the first to profile the amazing machines that resulted from the GTP&rsquo;s flat-out competition among different--and passionate--ideas about what might be the fastest way around a track: the V-12 with its better ground-effect tunnels but higher center of gravity (CG); the flat six with its low CG but severely-restricted ground-effect tunnels; and others that employed elaborate wings and air dams.<br> <br> Here are the people behind this engineering free-for-all, the culmination of almost a century of automobile racing experience. And here are eighteen of the most competitive vehicles they designed. Using photography, diagrams, drawings and first-person accounts from the men who built them, Inside <I>IMSA's Legendary GTP Race Cars</I> offers a detailed look at the technology that drove some of the world&rsquo;s most exciting race cars, the likes of which may never be seen again.</p> </DIV>