Josh:
I would agree with you that selling price is not an indicator of the
development cost of a vehicle. I think that I can take educated guesses on
what some of the front running cars have invested, in terms of time and money.
I do know, to the exact penny, what John Tak and I have invested in our
Firebird, which John drove to a fine fourth place at Nationals. Our total
dollar investment to date, including the car, parts (both upgrades and
maintenance), dyno time, insurance, title and plates, all the tires for two
full seasons - in other words, everything other than gas, has been less than
$20k.
When we first decided to go ESP two years ago, my assessment is that other
than John Ames and Ralph Maltby, no one had a "high buck" car, but cars that
did have development time and effort invested, and that a reasonable
investment and logical development should yield a trophy winning car. To that
end, I think that we've succeeded. The next question, for us (dollar, time,
and skill-wise), is what it'll take to run with Mark Madarash.
Al Chan
-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Hadler [mailto:jhadler@rmi.net]
Sent: Monday, October 04, 1999 6:42 PM
To: Chan, Albert (GEP)
Cc: 'Jeff Winchell'; 'team.net'
Subject: Re: Building A Nationals Winning Car (ESP)
"Chan, Albert (GEP)" wrote:
>
> Wanted to add my thoughts. Perhaps we're off this thread now.
>
> One option, for someone on a budget, besides Complete Custom Wheel, is to
look
> at the Diamond Racing Wheels. We have a set of 16x10 Avengers as spares.
While
> they are 23 pounds each (being steel), they are only $150 each.
>
> ESP, to get solidly into the trophies, is certainly not a $50k class. Dave
> Scholz's car (second at Nationals) was recently advertised for $26.5k and
Sam
> Strano's car (third at Nationals) was advertised at about $10k. I know that
we
> would take 40% of the $50k figure and gladly sell our car (4th and 8th at
> Nationals). Perhaps if you wanted to duplicate Eguina's car would you
approach
> the $50k figure, and that would be starting with a new car.
While I agree with you that ESP is probably not a $50k class, I would
disagree with why. Just because a car is selling for $26k, does not
mean, by any stretch, that it cost that much to develop. I'd be willing
to bet that those cars probably cost a bit more than that to get to
where they are. If that were the case, you could go out and duplicate
the Nagler/Marinus 3-time champion ASP RX-7tt for $26k. Somehow, I doubt
that car could be duplicated for that amount. And by the way, that's
what I think it's selling for right now.
SP ain't cheap. I'd bet that Elam or Hoelscher spent a pretty penny
developing their little SP cars, and I'm sure they both started with a
mighty cheap roller.
-Josh2
--
Joshua Hadler '74 914 2.0 CSP/Bi - Hooligan Racing #29 - CONIVOR
'87 Quantum Syncro - aka stealth quattro
jhadler@rmi.net
http://rainbow.rmi.net/~jhadler/
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