Track cars

What track type cars have caught your interest lately?

Last week at Cars and Coffee in Irvine, I saw a new one being unveiled. I recently drove the MEV which was pretty cool.

What have you guys seen, and not I am not talking about Corvettes, Mustangs etc? I am talking about kits and other dedicated type track toys.

XKR

I'm very interested in the Exocet since I could use all the good stuff I've put into the Miata.

A lot of the UK-made bargain 7 clones that accept motorcycle engine are pretty cool and not terribly hateful cost wise.

The new LS powered Brunton Stalker looks like fun.

Ultimately I'm partial to old, beat up Radicals if you can find one cheap enough. On the basis of $$/lap times there's nothing even close.

For track day hoonage, seems like taking an older, perhaps no longer competitive in the series CSR/DSR chassis and add favorite bike engine/trans and there you go. All the way from vintage like Per's LeGrand to more modern like motomoron's radical.

Every time I look at pondering something built from the ground up as a race car, I want to be able to actually race it. Spec Racer Ford often heads the list, but Motomoron's Radical story has been very interesting to follow...

ransom wrote: Every time I look at pondering something built from the ground up as a race car, I want to be able to actually race it. Spec Racer Ford often heads the list, but Motomoron's Radical story has been very interesting to follow...

This is coming from someone who only has autocrossed (i.e. no HPDE, no wheel to wheel) but I was under the impression that NASA was pretty good about letting anybody race.....I thought they just used a formula for power-weight ratio to find a class to drop you into.a class; i.e. that they'd find a place for you to run, although you may not be very competative.

Been going through a few in my mind.

V8 naked exocet, LS power, 302 as a cheaper option.

F500, not really "track day", but always on my radar, also F600

Designing/building a locost.

Locost A; Start from caterham designs and refine, either using a Focus SVT motor or S2k power. Build for DM and hope its light enough to add side protection so it would be comfy for track days.

Locost B; Basically look at an old Mallock formula ford, and think motorcycle powered.

Then the back of my head tells me to just put a bloody rollbar in my Miata and actually DO a track day instead of thinking through all these dream builds.

Something that always gets me.

Track days for formula cars and sports racers...

They seem a lot harder to find, the smaller cars are blatently unsafe beside the much heavier regular cars that won't even see a formula car, so they can't run together.

Am I mistaken?

Whats the cost comparison of track day entry for each?

Every time I see a spec racer ford for sale it really seems like a good idea. I also look at them and think that a few lights here, a few lights there, a horn, and one might be able to convince a nice DMV guy that you built a car in your garage that is deserving of plates. Seeing pictures of the 1970 Targa Florio Porsche 908's has also convinced me that driving this type of car on public roads makes total sense.

Apexcarver wrote: Then the back of my head tells me to just put a bloody rollbar in my Miata and actually DO a track day instead of thinking through all these dream builds.

+1

The most interesting I've seen recently is a converted Legend Car with a Suzuki GSXR 600 (?) motor in there. That struck me as an excellent affordable project and the owner was having a ball in it.

I saw an Ultima GTR last year, and a couple of Noble M400's over the years. They were interesting and rediculously fast in the right hands.

The Bauer Catfish looks really good to me, and I'm definitely watching the Exocet development.

You could get two birds with one stone if you were to take an ex-stock car and install an LS-series motor. You could even get some nice cross promotional tie in by buying a chassis from racingjunk.com. I've done a few HPDEs where there was 1 or 2 of these running and it was cool to see them out there.

Something like this:

http://www.racingjunk.com/NASCAR-ARCA-ASA-HOOTERS/2862998/Sprint-Cup-Ford-COT-Car.html