Fact One: Many of us really love to see great sports cars driven as they
were meant to be driven! I'd love to see more exotic sports cars at
SCCA autox's. This is the *Sports*Car* Club of America, right?
Fact Two: Most owners of the expensive exotic sports cars are not willing to
do much modification to their gems. Many are luxury cars as much as sports
cars and turning them into mega-buck SP cars is not reasonable.
Fact Three: Many of the more popular exotic sports cars are too fast for SS;
putting them there would destroy SS. So, the SCCA has bumped them right out
of Stock into SP. But to be competitive in ASP, the cars need to be prepped
to SP rules (see Fact Two).
Fact Four: There are numerous fantastic sports cars that don't make the 1000
count for auto-inclusion... the SCCA must name them for them to be legal. But
many aren't named to any existing Stock (or even SP) classes... making them
illegal unless turned into Mod cars. (Yeah, right! See Fact Two, doubled.)
I think that is all unfortunate. Thus, in the interest of promoting more
stock exotic sports cars at autocrosses, I suggest adding an X Stock class
for such cars. It would include:
Dodge Viper
Porsche 911 Turbo AWD (incl the 996 turbo)
BMW Z8
Mustang Cobra R
Callaway Corvette
Ferrari (all street cars NOC)
Lamborghini (all street cars NOC)
Lotus (all street cars NOC)
Mclaren (all street cars NOC)
Panoz (all street cars NOC)
Vector M-12
Basically, all those 350-550hp 3000-4500lb supercars built for the track,
but marketed to the wealthy as luxury cars ;^). I want to see them more often
at events. Even if just one or two more such cars show up, it would make the
event for me. And yes, many of the cars wouldn't be super competitive; but I
suspect their owners would feel better losing in that class of track-oriented
sports cars than losing in BS to a $10K Miata anyway. ;^) And yes, some such
cars might be total overdogs; however, I doubt it -- and when they rarely show
up, I'll happily hand them a trophy to encourage them to show up again (see
Fact One ;^).
Heck, we may even want to move some of the exotics that are currently
uncompetitive
in some of the existing "slower" classes and move them "up" to
XS! Why? Because
at local events, they may occasionally end up competitive since the mix
will be
diverse due to the small populations of each variety of car. And, in any
case,
they'll feel better losing in the "track car" class rather than in the "little
economy car" class ;^).
Well, its a thought; flame away....
Brian
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