Originally Posted by jiml

And you probably don't win very many races either.

When "sedan" first started, many people appreciated the scale apperance of the cars, especially the Tamiya cars. Many racers jumped from the very competitive 1/12 scale to the new have fun class. From the beginning the racers wanted to keep the cars as stock appearing as possible, and not introduce the higher competitive things like aerodynamic bodies and foam tires.

So early on it was decided that bodies must be 4 door sedans and you must run rubber tires.

But, racers being racers, things began to change as people looked for "advantages." Chassis design went from molded plastic to the machined graphite and aluminum we see today. And once racers figured out that a certain body handled better than the others, everyone brought that body. So body makers began looking at what made bodies handle different, and now you have the current crop of blobs, as someone else put it.

I'm with you, I would rather see more realistic looking cars. However most racers only care about going fast and not what it looks like.