Order of Magnitude Challenge? Flame suit on. Thoughts?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

NOHOME said:

But... As hard to believe as it is for some, 2k is money not worth bending over  to pick up. Some of those people live among us even if incognito. I want to see what they would bring to the table if given the chance to do so.

OK wealthy people of GRM, here's how you do this without changing the challenge budget:

• Buy tools.  CNC machines, welders, 3d scanners, lifts, build tables.  This is all budget exempt.
• Don't have the ability to engineer parts yourself?  Buy the parts you want and reverse engineer them.  Fabricate near-exact copies from scrap using your well equipped shop for minimal budget hit.
• Don't have the ability to reverse engineer and fabricate?  Get teammates.  A large number of capable people exist on this forum who would join your team and lend their time to your challenge effort in exchange for use of your now-pro-level motorsports shop.
• Test.  Rent track time, use data acquisition, tune to perfection.  Yet again, if this is something you can't do yourself there are people here who will join your team just to use the stuff.
• Driver training, in the car.  This comes after or during testing, and your superior budget will allow you to do as much as you want without having to increase the budget cap of the car itself.

Hey look at that, I just figured out how to spend $100k of your dollars on a $2k challenge car.

There's a lot of readers who use the same thinking, skills, etc. that go into a challenge build but put that effort into more expensive cars.  Just look in build threads to see all kinds of wildly varying builds that are actually sports cars, ya know for The Hardcore Sports Car Magazine.   Ferraris, Europas, Porsche kit car, TVRs, XKE and on and on have build threads. Add in all the cars that might or might not be considered Sports Cars by one's definition like Corvairs, crammits, Mustangs, Javelins and others with values over $2,000.00 and there's quite a pool of vehicles that might attend. Perhaps an event that would draw these types cars would benefit GRM as a company since many of them are built/rebuilt/upgraded using parts from advertisers.

So I think that there's a happy medium that would not be challenged related.

I feel that what is being desired here is a festival of types for all things grassroots related regardless of budget or vintage. Think a Mitty, but non vintage. Gridlife comes pretty close. Event wise I think what would be of benefit would be if there was a facility that had a track and convention center type space. So that GRM could set up a festival type event space for competition and enjoyment, and then have a trade show type space for advertisers and business partners to show display rub elbows have items available for demo, real world real-time product testing and to engage with their client base and target market. Guest speakers and round tables scheduled at certain times speaking on different topics. 

That would be an event format that would bring value on a multitude of levels. I'll be honest over the past decade PRI has become less and less impressive to me as SEMA's influence and control of the show is tangible. I have little to no doubt that our host here would be able to put on a better event. 

The biggest question would be location wise where is there a facility that could accommodate this? If everybody competing on track went true grassroots style and were to paddock in parking areas and garage stalls were left to be utilized for vendor space, then between the garage spaces and the decently sized building, Sebring could work, I suspect some of the tracks in Georgia would definitely be feasible. Charlotte could maybe work? I haven't been to Daytona but logistically it would be easiest for the host and I'd be somewhat surprised if they didn't have the facilities to make it work. 

It sounds like the answer to this question is more "GRM Festival of Speed" and less "Challenge x10"