Spice Engineering - Constructor History

Constructor History

Following Spice's initial work on the Tiga GC85, Gordon Spice decided to begin to construct his own chassis not only for the C2 class in the World Sportscar Championship, but also for the Lights class in IMSA GT. He received engineering input from General Motors for the IMSA effort, using Pontiac engines in place of the Ford Cosworths. The first design by the team was the SE86, which the SE standing for Spice Engineering, and 86 for the year of its construction, 1986. This numbering scheme would be used by nearly all Spice chassis.

After having considerable success with their smaller chassis, Spice made the move to the larger C1 and GTP classes with the SE89. This would be replaced by the successful SE90 the following year, of which Spice built near 30 chassis of that design or similar over several years. Many privateers bought the SE90s, winning various championships. Spice would also end its relationship with General Motors, instead becoming the factory squad for Honda, running Acura engines in SE90-based chassis.

By 1992, Spice began to develop newer designs to replace their older chassis, but the company would soon hit financial troubles before multiple cars could be built. Spice's final chassis was finished in 1993, at which time the World Sportscar Championship had been canceled and IMSA was bringing in a new set of rules for open-cockpit sportscars in 1994. However, even though Spice no longer built new cars, many teams took it upon themselves to adapt existing Spice designs to the new regulations. Many chassis had their roof removed to make them open-cockpit, and some of these heavily modified designs would still be competitively racing until 1999.

During Spice's stint as the factory Pontiac team, they also constructed several Pontiac Fiero race cars for the IMSA GTO and GTU classes, having some mixed success. These would be the only Spices based on production cars instead of purpose-built sports cars.