What car? Rallyx daily gas saver.

So I feel like the time is drawing near for some fleet reconfiguring. My stable currently holds

02 silverado 2500hd; this is my current DD. Its great at doing truck stuff and can fit my whole family when need be, but gets abysmal fuel mileage.

65 mustang; this is my weekend fun car.

93 Beretta; rallycross car. It runs good and drives good, but i bought it without a title so it cant be on the road.

So my thinking was to A) sell the mustang. Its a good street hot rod, but the novelty has worn off. I just dont get as excited about it as i used to. B) relegate the truck to truck stuff only duty. C) sell or gift the beretta to my racing partner. D) buy a car that can be my rallycross car and a gas saver work car. This is where i want recommendations. What im looking for is a car that can be bought pretty cheap, if it needs major mechanical repairs that would be fine. It needs to be fairly common, so that finding an engine or trans isnt to difficult. I want american or asian. It has to be something that was decently reliable. I also want something that would be fast enough to be fairly competitive if its driver stops sucking. Moderately ok fuel mileage, 20 or better. Hard top. Also no awd, that class is for the serious guys.

Since im keeping the truck im not scared of dd'ing the racecar. The truck will be a fine backup. Also because i have a truck and the wife has a small suv utility and snow driving arent a concern.

So what do you recommend?

Eighth Gen Civic Si is what I would have been shopping for if I had the monies. I only had a couple grand so I got an old Civic hatch.

How about a Civic? FWD, reliable, high parts availability, fun to drive, good mileage, and with some snow tires could be pretty competitive in SF.

A Mini could be fun to drive, but I'm not sure what its RallyX ability would be.

Depending on budget a FiST or FoST would be fun on and off pavement. You could drop down in price and look for an SVT Focus. On the same platform you've got the Mazda 3 and the Mazdaspeed version.

If you want bigger, what about a Mazda 6 or a Maxima?

My recommendation is not to combine a daily driver and a rallycross car, unless you have something (like your truck perhaps) that you can use as a backup daily.

If you want to be reasonably competitive locally, but are not worried about national level, I'd say look for a 1st gen Neon and run it in SF or PF, or some sort of GM fwd compact (Cobalt, Cavalier, etc). Ratchet it up a level, and maybe a Volvo S40, like Knurled has. I think they can be had with a turbo, so adding power for PF class should be relatively easy.

If you want a nationally competitive car, my theory is that a 2004-05 Neon SRT-4 may be the best bet for PF and SF. Parts are getting a little harder to come by, but they are still available.

If you don't care about national or division level competition - there is one other route to go. SR is usually not too heavily subscribed around here. Almost anything could do alright, as long as you keep it reliable enough to make it to enough events. I've considered running a Crown Vic, for the hell of it.

I'll say what I always say: Neon. If you can find one.

You really don't want an S40. The turbo (they only came with turbo) is a liability more than an asset and the automatic is great until you want a good diff for it, then it isn't. And it gets stuck on flat ground if it's wet.

BG chassis mazda/escort then BP dohc swap (if not an escort gt/protégé lx). There are coil on plug conversions and megasquirt or evo ecu conversions that together with a second exhaust cam to swap will yield nearly 160whp. Limited slip differentials are also available.

There are a few people mentioning civics, ive noticed price coming down on them, which is great, but i dont often hear them mentioned for rallycross. Is there a reason why they dont get much dirty love?

As for neons and focii, they are respected in rallycross, and they are cheap and available. Did any of them come with posi out of the factory?

The only Neon with an LSD from ChryCo was the SRT4.

Downside to Neons is that parts are getting a little thin on the ground for first gens and second gens will be right behind. As much as a 1gn is great for RallyX (especially when you add turbo and an OBX LSD!), it's kind of a problem when replacement axles are a two day wait. I used to be able to find a half dozen or more 1gns in each of the local junkyards at any given time, but right now two of the three yards in town have exactly zero. Plus performance parts are starting to get NLA. Suspension options are a bit limited right now - there are some NOS Koni yellows and blacks out there, but mostly it's KYB or Koni orange.

No, Chevy didn't make them.

Some SRT4s came with Torsen diffs, I think. '05-up.

Civics are actually very popular, just not around here so much for some reason. Personally I don't like the driving dynamics (steering column and dash are way too low for me) or the constant dread that there will be a Civic-sized empty spot in the street when I try to leave for work in the morning.

'95 Saturn twin cam S series with ABS

I know I'm a broken record, but '82-'85 Toyota celica. 500$ all day long. Bulletproof 22re with gobs of torque for off-road. OEM suspension was already built for light rally duty, just rebuild it. Ford 8.8 is cheap and easy swap for a cheap LSD and better gear ratios. Stout 5spd. Oh, and did I mention RWD? That's rallycross fun, Daily driver fun, and snow fun, and drag strip fun, and drifting fun, and autocross fun, and if you get the convertible version, it's even fun for the wife. Even has a back seat for kids.

Trackmouse wrote: I know I'm a broken record, but '82-'85 Toyota celica. 500$ all day long.

You live on the West Coast, where Toyota had a strong market share and they sold plenty of cars. And no road salt.

We're in Ohio, where driving imports was, until recently, heavily frowned upon. Everybody either made their living or had family and friends who made their living thanks to the Big Three. They dissolved like Alka-Seltzer in winter regardless. What is a $500 all day car to you is a unicorn that you drive 5 hours to look at a nonrunning POS here.

I woud absolutely love to have a Celica notchback for to make a TTE Group B clone. However finding one would basically mean, well, driving 2500-3000mi out to where you are and picking one up and getting a bunch of spares, kind of like how I got my last RX-7 and a car and trailer full of spares.

Come to think of it, I drove 12 hours each way to pick up the previous RX-7 too, ten or so years ago.

Knurled wrote:

Trackmouse wrote: I know I'm a broken record, but '82-'85 Toyota celica. 500$ all day long.

You live on the West Coast, where Toyota had a strong market share and they sold plenty of cars. And no road salt. We're in Ohio, where driving imports was, until recently, heavily frowned upon. Everybody either made their living or had family and friends who made their living thanks to the Big Three. They dissolved like Alka-Seltzer in winter regardless. What is a $500 all day car to you is a unicorn that you drive 5 hours to look at a nonrunning POS here.

Quite right. Although there is a honda plant in my neighborhood so those are fairly common, but beyond that imports are slim pickins locally.

Unicorn

It's not my first choice to rallycross, I really just wanted to share what I managed to find when looking for you.

gearheadmb wrote: Also no awd, that class is for the serious guys.

In our (large) region, the 'serious competitive' classes are Prepared RWD and Mod RWD. They're also the most fun classes (I'm saying that as someone who rallycrosses an e30 and daily-drives a WRX and has no interest in rallycrossing a WRX).....AWD is just the "serious money" classes frequently since the cars are newer, in general.

Then again, if you want American/Asian and hardtop AND to be competitive, then RWD isn't for you anyhow. It's dominated by Miatas and older BMWs, with the occasional MR2 thrown in. Other than MR2 (and a newer BRZ/FRS), I can't think of any other Asian/American RWD car that is competitive.

captdownshift wrote: Unicorn It's not my first choice to rallycross, I really just wanted to share what I managed to find when looking for you.

Very nice!

I think Civics are rare in rallycross around here because, by the time they are cheap enough to beat on, rust has started to make them a little fragile. If you are willing to spend enough to get a newer, more solid one, they should make a decent rallycrosser.

I didn't realize that about Japanese cars in the Midwest. I know when I grew up in southern Illinois I once saw a 1989 civic. A buddy and I stopped and gawked forever just because it was the first one we had ever seen. In that case I would suggest the old cop car method. Manual swap. Enjoy.

The idea here is cheap, daily thrills,Right? Pretty sure the only way you are getting "cheap" AND "mpg" is Japanese man.

I recall pulling well over 30mpg driving wae's turbocharged Neon home from Nationals, on rally tires. I was in awe. I think the first tank was 33mpg.

I still do not recommend driving a hulled out car on rally tires for extended periods, even with hearing protection.

As far as rwd cars, im not interested in miatas, or bmw, and i have never liked the seating position or field of view of an f-body. But how do we feel about a 6 cyl sn95 mustang? They are plenty cheap, and parts availability is ridiculous. Any reason they would be a bad idea?

They handle like poo and I have played video games that had better driving feedback.

Speaking as someone who actually did drive a V6 SN95 at an event for a few runs.

I suppose adding a lot more front spring or swaybar or both would help the scrody handling. That is usually my answer to everything. Seems to work though Cars handle awful when you load down the outside front and it just bottoms out and lifts the inside rear off the ground. Especially rear drivers.

Might be worth a fly and drive

gearheadmb wrote: As far as rwd cars, im not interested in miatas, or bmw, and i have never liked the seating position or field of view of an f-body. But how do we feel about a 6 cyl sn95 mustang? They are plenty cheap, and parts availability is ridiculous. Any reason they would be a bad idea?

It should tell you something that even with sn95s being cheap and plentiful with tons of parts availability.....still nobody (or at least nobody I know of) rallycrosses them competitively. The only one I've ever seen on a rallycross course a couple years ago managed to spin multiple times and then broke something.

All that said, rallycross is more about the driver than the car, so if you're a good driver, you can possibly do well with a mediocre car. Of course, it's just easier if you start with a competitive car in the first place. THere are plenty of cars out there you can have some fun with for cheap if winnning isn't a big concern.

irish44j wrote: Of course, it's just easier if you start with a competitive car in the first place.

This basically sums up the point of my long, rambling original post.

I suck at driving. But I'm new at it, at least competitively. My plan is to get better. My current car could go faster with some talent in the seat, I will fully admit that. I'm not coming from a viewpoint of "OMG I could win Nats if weren't for my succulent car!"

The biggest issue is that I don't have a gas saver work beater. I think it would be a good thing to have. I don't like having a ton of cars to try to keep running. I like to have my fleet as consolidated as possible. I'd rather have two solid cars than a bunch of barely running cars. My beretta can't do daily duty due to a lack of title. When we bought that the theory was that we wouldn't even know if we liked rallycross so we bought the cheapest car we could find that would do the job. Now I know its a ton of fun and I'd like to continue. So with consolidation in mind I figured rally car/beater car double duty would be a good route. This time it would be nice to find a car that itself is good at rallycross, so if someday I suck less I may be able to keep up with the herd. It may be a while before I act on this, but I like to have a plan in place so I can start educating myself on a certain model so I know what to look for.

I'm liking a lot of what I'm hearing. Civics, focus and neons are a possibility. There are plenty around here available. As far as the BG escorts, I know a lot of people like them, I just can't remember the last time I saw one in the wild with any life left. I've seen my share of cheap bmw's around, and they are supposed to be a good answer for rwd fun but they scare me.

Ooh, if you can find one without terminal rust, a Protege5 would probably be a good option. Small, light, good handling, and would have no problem hauling tools and a spare set of wheels to a rallycross.