Who knew NASCAR considered an entirely new car built specifically for Street and Road Race Circuits to help bolster their connection to the Western side of the continent?
I'm sad that we didn't get to see the smaller cars come to fruition, not that I'm the biggest fan of street circuits, but the smaller cars and the V6 development would have been interesting.
That said, the fact that no one thought to just buy a Trans-Am or SCCA GT1 car and plop a NASCAR body on it is a bit mystifying to me, but I guess they're used to building the cars their way.
Ha yeah, they'd probably say that some bar is in the wrong place and even if your wheelbase and track were the same your front and rear overhang were wrong and ban the car.
They already had a V6 national class at the time, the Goody's Dash Series, so it wouldn't have been that difficult to adapt. In fact, they had discussed adding road courses to the series at some point, but it never made it past the discussion phase.
Vajingo
New Reader
8/21/20 1:40 p.m.
NASCAR is a group rife with "shouldas", "has beens", "missed opportunities", and "bad ideas" since the 2000's.
Honestly I think they could've just used Trans-Am or IMSA GT cars as is, but they probably had some reason why they didn't do that. Although like the video said, Bobby Allison did repurpose his car for use in the Daytona 24 after the LR rules fell apart, so it couldn't have been too much different regardless.
In reply to racerdave600 :
The Dash was running 4 Cylinders at the time. What's known as the Infinity series ran V-6s then.
Stefan (Forum Supporter) said:
Who knew NASCAR considered an entirely new car built specifically for Street and Road Race Circuits to help bolster their connection to the Western side of the continent?
I'm sad that we didn't get to see the smaller cars come to fruition, not that I'm the biggest fan of street circuits, but the smaller cars and the V6 development would have been interesting.
That said, the fact that no one thought to just buy a Trans-Am or SCCA GT1 car and plop a NASCAR body on it is a bit mystifying to me, but I guess they're used to building the cars their way.
Plus at the same time imsa also had their kelly American series many cars which were built by short track racers and chassis companies.
I watched them test one at the Meadowlands Grand Prix, I have a picture somewhere. I think it had an Olds Calais body. It was about the size of the Dash cars but with bigger wheels and tires like the Cup cars.
In reply to MotorsportsGordon :
NASCAR always wants exclusively with the cars. Like the former Elite Late Model Series, The teams had to run a certain chassis spec that was uncompetitive in other late model series. NASCAR dropped the class due to low car counts.
It has been said that nascar also dropped the lr concept because John bishop of imsa wasn't a fan of the idea. Remember that he was very close with friends with Bill France sr who co founded imsa with him.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
The Grand National cars were slightly smaller cup cars with big v6s, the Dash cars were based on compacts (Cavalier, Escort, etc) originally with 4cyl then small V6s.
chada75 said:
In reply to MotorsportsGordon :
NASCAR always wants exclusively with the cars. Like the former Elite Late Model Series, The teams had to run a certain chassis spec that was uncompetitive in other late model series. NASCAR dropped the class due to low car counts.
They would have been way better off for the first prototype going to someone like ed howe or ray Dillon who had way more experience building smaller cars than banjo Matthews. Plus Howe,Dillon,and other companies like stock car products etc were pretty common in imsa kelly series,imsa gto,trans am and gt1. Banjo Matthews expertise was mostly the bigger cup and Busch type cars.
Wally (Forum Supporter) said:
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
The Grand National cars were slightly smaller cup cars with big v6s, the Dash cars were based on compacts (Cavalier, Escort, etc) originally with 4cyl then small V6s.
The 4 cyl era in the 80s was dominated by pontiac super duty 4
In reply to MotorsportsGordon :
Argeed. Unless if it's the legends cars, Never was a fan of exclusive cars in oval track racing since it shuts out others teams that might help fill fields out. Really the only inclusive oval series is the share ruleset of the Cars/Arca/Cra series.
