Growing up in the UK in the 1950's, the addition of any saloon cars to any grid wasn't normal - even in Formula Libre, until the latter part of the decade. All race programmes initially, probably from the Brookland's days, had races for single seaters and sports cars - usually by capacity. In those days, you drooled over any car in the programme, as it was a rarity to see any on the streets - and when you did, it was a head turning moment.

There is a logical comment to add here, but I won't.

Formula Libre for us, was when Chris Summers was able to run the Cooper Chevrolet (usually the only single seater over about 3,000cc) as there were no other stand alone classes with big banger single seaters or larger engined sports cars.

When Mini's hit the race tracks very soon after their launch, we had a spate of fairly standard or lightly modified saloons (called touring cars), Riley 1.5's, Borgward, Jaguars, Zephyrs etc., until the super saloons (Jag powered Anglia, V8 A40's and Cortinas etc) hit the tracks, along with space frame Minis. At that point I suppose we had 'open saloons'.

We also had by the end of the 1950's, small GT's - mainly Lotus Elites, often mixed with sports cars then in the early 1960's, bigger GT's, such as Jaguar E Types, Ferraris and Aston Martins. Still the sort of machinery to drool over and relatively rare on the public roads.

Presumably, NZ followed a similar path, but may well have been racing saloons earlier?