Not sure what 'viable' ideas other people have, but i think what V8 Supercars are doing for next year and the future is fantastic!!
Being the 3rd highest money earning sport in Australia, the series needed a revamp to make it more appealing to new fans and possibly international interest.
The money that will come in from Nissan, and possibly other manufacturers coming into the sport means there is a future for the sport!
Means Holden and Ford can distribute their funds more evenly to less teams, and Nissan can develop their cars well enough that more teams would be keen to use their car for the 2014 season.
I agree, it's getting a bit stale with just Holden and Ford, but logically whoever joins has to have a similar rwd/4 door/v8 platform, otherwise it will be the early 90's again when the GT-R's walked all over everyone else.
Also as much as i'm a massive fan of the old Group A touring car days, it just wouldn't work in today's busy schedule. Good example is an engine change. On a V8 race ute (based off a road car), it takes up to 8 hours for a race team to do an engine change, in a V8 supercar, the whole driveline can be swapped over in less than 2 hours. That means if something happens race 1, the car is back for race 2.
Then there's the whole safety aspect, you could make a road based car just as safe as a V8 supercar, but then trying to make that car do comparative lap times, just couldn't be done.
All the people saying it's boring, no one's forcing you to watch, i still reckon the racing is good, the championships are close faught and judging by the crowd at the test day at Sandwon yesterday, V8 Supercar is still getting support from hundereds of thousands of fans!!
Then in the coming years when there's more International exposure, who knows where it could lead!!