I found a cheap & rusty AW11 MR2 for $500 that I think might be the winner.
I found a cheap & rusty AW11 MR2 for $500 that I think might be the winner.
My Suzuki Esteem that I have for sale would be perfect for this! 
When I was in Ottawa I attended a couple of what they called snowcross events in my WRX. It was done on a parking lot that had a layer of ice on it covered in snow. One of the fastest cars there was the blue Subaru below. I think it was a 96 or 97 Legacy. The owner said it was an automatic and he just left it in 1st for the whole course. It would upshift to second gear if the RPM's got too high. Number 13 in the photo was pretty quick too. Watching it do Scandinavian flick's through the corners was awesome.
I doubt the owner was into the Legacy for more than $1000 including snow tires. Mine and the other WRX's ended up being about mid pack in terms of times in the AWD class. I mostly spun the tires and made a lot of noise, while the NA cars just shot through the course.
They had three snowcross classes. AWD, RWD, and FWD. AWD was the clear winner in times and RWD was the slowest by a considerable amount, but also the least represented. In terms of getting stuck in snowbanks and getting towed just about every type of car managed to do so, so I'm not sure if the type of drive really matters there.
They also did a few 3 hour wheel to wheel endurance races in their beaters.
Here are a couple galleries for inspiration:
Your goals in this search are to find a cheap car with small, easy to find wheels, cheap brake parts, manual transmission and body panels that you don't care about.
I've pretty much decided to resurrect my old 1972 Super Beetle for this purpose. Any set up advice? And does anyone know where to get a heater that's actually worth a damn for it? I hope to debut it at next year's Lime Rock winter autocross series (provided we actually get some snow next winter)
I've got my sights set on an SN95 (1994-2004) Mustang now. cheap, RWD, easy to retrofit with limited slip & I can build it into a $200X Challenge car later on
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